Study You Don’t Need To Read – Walking Through Doorways Causes Forgetting

A study in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology by some folks at University of Notre Dame conducted three experiments and concluded that if you walk into a room and forget what you came to do, the doorway is responsible.

The environment can likely affect memory, we get that - I have often forgotten to take out the garbage even though my wife insists she told me to do so, because I was playing my PS3 - but doorways as 'event boundaries' means we can get away with almost anything.  The doorway to a strip club can be attributed to forgetting you are not allowed to go to those, for example;  "But honey, it was in a journal".

The article is open access, which is nice. Future studies can tackle other pesky issues, like why your propane grill only runs out of propane when you are in the middle of using it.

Credit: Notre Dame

H/T Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows - Science Codex

Citation: Gabriel A. Radvansky, Sabine A. KrawietzAndrea K. Tamplin,'Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Further explorations', The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Volume 64, Issue 8, August 2011, pages 1632-1645 DOI:10.1080/17470218.2011.571267

Leave a Reply