The Doorway Effect Has a Rational Explanation
At first glance, it seems nonsensical. How can doors affect memory? Of course, the doors themselves are not to blame. The reason why many people forget things while moving between rooms is due to a restart of short-term memory. This restart occurs because of the need to absorb new stimuli.
The doorway effect does not only work in unfamiliar environments, but also in home settings. And it doesn't matter whether we pass between rooms every day or only occasionally.
Testing
The closed doorway effect is not just an untested theory. The phenomenon has already been thoroughly tested and therefore scientifically confirmed. Several dozen volunteers participated in the test, where they were tasked with walking between different rooms while remembering pre-selected objects. Even though many of the volunteers experienced the doorway effect, the results were not as expected by scientists.
For this reason, they tried to make the test a little more challenging and added a few extra cognitive tasks for the participants. After that, the door effect was already showing up for most of the test subjects.
The similarity between individual rooms also played a significant role in the testing. The effect appeared much less when moving between similarly looking rooms. So, it doesn't mean that every time we pass between rooms, we will experience a small amnesia. The risk of losing short-term memory increases with the number of cognitive tasks. Simply put, if we have a lot on our mind, the doorway effect is likely to manifest in us.
How to Combat the Doorway Effect?
Those who experience the doorway effect too often should try a few basic tricks that have been proven to work. One of the simplest is just to return to the room we came from. The brain will recall the room and the lost thought along with it. However, this method may not always work. There are other tricks too.
Even more effective is to constantly repeat your thought out loud. In that case, there is a high chance we won't forget it. The ideal, however, is to always have a notebook or mobile phone with us to write down everything important. However, it is clear that this method, due to its complexity, will be used by only a few.
The Doorway Effect: Why Do We Forget and How to Combat It?
Due to occasional short-term memory loss, we don't have to immediately fall into melancholy. Very likely, we are experiencing the doorway effect. Fortunately, there are ways to effectively avoid the manifestations of this phenomenon, even though they are not 100% effective.
Simply put, we must get used to the fact that every now and then, when moving between two rooms, a thought will occasionally slip away.
