Why Did I Come Into The Kitchen?

We've all had this happen. You are looking for something (for example, your glasses), walk into the kitchen to find them, get there and can't remember what you came there looking for. This has been happening to me, and I suspect many of you, for years. You think you're losing your mind, but new research suggests that walking through doorways causes forgetting. This research comes to us from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky. He says that "Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away." Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized. Radvansky conducted three experiments in both real and virtual environments. The college students he studied performed memory tasks while crossing a room and while exiting a doorway. In the first experiment, subjects used a virtual environment and moved from one room to another, selecting an object on a table and exchanging it for an object at a different table. They did the same thing while moving across a room but not crossing a doorway. Radvansky found that the subjects forgot more after walking through a doorway compared to moving the same distance across a room. This suggests that the doorway or 'event boundary' impedes one's ability to retrieve thoughts or decisions made in a different room. The second experiment was in a real-world setting. It required subjects to conceal in boxes the objects choses from the table and move them either across a room or through a doorway. The results in the real world replicated those in the virtual world: walking through a doorway diminished subjects' memories. Finally, the subjects were tested to see whether doorways actually served as even boundaries or if one's ability to remember is linked to the environment in which a decision was created. The results of this experiment suggest that the act of passing through a doorway serves as a way the mind files away memories. We've always though that forgetting what you entered a room for was caused by age, but studies by Radvansky with college students show that age is not a factor. Doorways are event boundaries, and thus traveling from one room to another may cause you to be unable to retrieve thoughts made in a different room. I love the new science that is constantly being discovered. Studies like this explain our forgetfulness and let us know that we're still normal.