Wait…What was I thinking again?

Have you ever been in your bedroom thinking to yourself you need to get something from the kitchen and when you get to the kitchen you completely forget what you were going to get? Well, let me tell you, this has happened to me way too many times to count and it is caused by walking through your bedroom doorway.

The process of this forgetfulness is a result of event segmentation that your brain develops. It is created when an event boundary is encountered, e.g., the doorway. When you enter the next room, you create a “new event model,” simplistically speaking, all the things that will be done and the new memories being created in that room (Radvansky, 2011). The event model created in the previous room begin to decline until it has become background memories. Now in the new room (e.g., the kitchen or living room), a new event model is established and you are producing new memories that are easier to retrieve within that immediate area.

In order to remember what you were thinking from your bedroom to the kitchen, you must be able to associate that memory/thought from that prior location (the bedroom) to a new location (the kitchen). This process can become difficult because the two event models that contain the target information both compete with one another at retrieval, thus, generating interference and making retrieval of that information slower and more prone to mistakes (Radvansky, 2011). With more locations a thought/memory is in, the harder it is to retrieve it from one particular event model due to the disruption of visual-spatial processing in active memory (Radvansky, 2011). This translates to when you are in the kitchen, all the spatial awareness and thoughts created will impede on the spatial awareness and thoughts you had in the previous room causing you to forget your initial idea.

Therefore, we can conclude the thoughts and memories we create are affected by our external environment, especially your bedroom doorway. Perhaps, we should live in houses without rooms, just one open area. Think of all the information we will never forget. Or maybe a more simplistic approach, just stick to a notepad and pencil and write every thought down.

Radvansky, G. A., Krawietz, S. A., & Tamplin, A. K. (2011). Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Further explorations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006), 64(8), 1632-1645. doi:http://dx.doi.org.dml.regis.edu/10.1080/17470218.2011.571267