Does your memory diminish when you walk through a doorway?

It sounds so strange, but it’s true. When you walk through a doorway, your memory suffers. But why? Researchers say that it has to do with “event boundaries”, that is, the effect has more to do with physical space than how that information is encoded. So when you walk through a doorway you’re entering a new physical space, and this triggers your brain to update its memory and create a new “memory episode.”

In all, three experiments were conducted, by Gabriel A. Radvansky , Sabine A. Krawietz & Andrea K. Tamplin of Notre Dame’s Dept. of Psychology. Study participants were asked to remember objects in a room, then recall them at a later time. A study summary, published by BPS’ Research Digest, stated: “The key finding is that memory performance was poorer after travelling through an open doorway, compared with covering the same distance within the same room.”

Experiment #1 was in a 55-room virtual setting where participants were asked to enter a room, pick up an object from a table (the object would disappear once they picked it up), then deposit that object at another table – sometimes in the same room, sometimes in a new room. Participants were asked to recall the object that they were carrying. When researchers discovered the memory lapse from passing through a doorway, they wondered if the virtual setting might be the cause. Enter experiment #2, a real-life network of rooms. Same elements, same result – participants were more skilled at recalling objects when they remained in the same room.

The question now was: perhaps this odd memory effect had to do with context, that is, that recall was linked to “where” they picked up the object (i.e., where they originally encoded it into their memory). Researchers asked: is it easier to recall an object/idea based on where you first learned it? (author’s note: reading about “context”, I immediately thought about when I misplace my keys, and my tendency to return to the place that I last remembered them). Researchers tested the context hypothesis, by allowing participants to return to the room in which they originally encoded the memory, but again found no substantive difference. Their conclusion? Crossing through a doorway does indeed alter memory. In fact, the study found that the more rooms a person visited, they weaker their memory became.

Implications? Hmmm, hard to fathom, but perhaps if you’re putting away the Christmas decorations in a new location, you just might want to hang out in that room a bit longer, to make sure that the memory is fully encoded. After all, once you leave the room, a new memory episode begins.