A study explains why you forget what you came to a room to do within seconds.
As you’re about to leave your couch to get your car keys from the hallway, you suddenly forget what you’re here to do. “What did I have in mind to come here?” Everyone has felt this feeling at least once in their life. Don’t worry, Alzheimer’s disease is not threatening you! It is even a relatively common phenomenon.
In reality, memory works in our brain thanks to a complex mechanism. A 2011 study carried out by Gabriel A. Radvansky notably looked into the subject. He asked 55 students to play a virtual reality game, the goal being to carry an object from one room to another. Each time a room was passed, an image appeared on their screen. Participants had to click “yes” or “no” to say whether or not this was the object being carried. The images also appeared when participants remained in the same room.
The study shows that responses were less precise and slower when participants were asked about the nature of the object as they moved from one room to another. And this, even when returning to the starting room. Knowing several pieces therefore minimized or even destroyed the memory.
This is what we call the “Doorway effect”. This is exactly what happens when you forget why you came to the entrance of your house, for example. And this is rather good news. Indeed, this demonstrates the proper functioning of your brain. At the end of the study, the researchers concluded that the participants’ brains perceived the doors as a “breaking point.” Moving to another room involves a change of environment both physical and mental. So, the brain faces this new environment by emptying its memory to store new data and understand this sudden change. While maintaining attention despite changes in context is entirely possible, in fact, you don’t forget every day where you left your keys, it requires a lot more concentration. This is why these little daily oversights are common but not worrying.