Raymond Yu, Q4 Week 1 - Rooms
Q3 Week 4 - Metaphorically
By Raymond Yu
(Art displaying memory as a filing cabinet)
Memories are notoriously unreliable, but one case of forgetfulness stands out in particular: the "doorway effect." The "doorway effect" describes the phenomenon where people forget what they were going to do as soon as they walk through a doorway. It is what causes people to stand in the living room, look for a pencil to write with, and then forget what they wanted as soon as they enter the next room. The reason behind this phenomenon is an interesting quirk of the way short-term memory works. Short-term memories are memories that are only stored temporarily in the brain, and either get encoded into long-term memory or get discarded and wiped depending on the personal importance of the information contained.
Human brains, according to a 2011 article on Scientific American, are primed to wipe short-term memory as soon as the context changes. Why? It serves an evolutionary purpose: since short-term memory space is limited, only being able to hold onto less than 10 chunks of information at a time, clearing the memory space after finishing one task to prepare for another task is extremely beneficial to enable productivity. By clearing out the no longer relevant information, the brain makes space for people to focus on the new job at hand. The "doorway effect" seems to be an unintended consequence of this quirk: when the context changes, the brain assumes that it is moving onto a new task and does what it is naturally inclined to do, which is to say, wipe the short-term memory. But how does this result?
Language is useful in many ways, one of which is organizing concepts into separate categories. It allows people to make clear distinctions between apples and oranges, even though both are fruits and round. This also applies to concepts like rooms, so language allows the brain to make a clear separation between two different rooms as different contexts for different purposes, like the distinctions between a living room and a kitchen. While this helps with everyday activities, this also prompts the brain to believe that it is going to change tasks, and thus it wipes the short-term memory. Memory, in the form of the "doorway effect," is clearly influenced by the concept distinctions created by language. For better or worse, this quirk of memory does not seem to be going anywhere soon. The best way to address it is simply to record the mission before one passes through any doors. Have you ever experienced this effect before? If so, how do you address it?
Image Source:
https://around.uoregon.edu/content/uo-lab-advances-research-memory-formation-and-recall
Article Source:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-through-doorway-makes-you-forget/
https://www.simplypsychology.org/short-term-memory.html
Hey Ray!
ReplyDeleteTo start, the way you and Sean has the exact same image for your blogs was so funny to me. Going back to your blog, I am so glad you wrote about the "doorway effect." I did not know that was a phenomenon that everyone experienced, I thought I was just dumb. Going somewhere to do or get something but then forgetting is the worst feeling ever. But knowing there is proven reason behind it makes me feel a lot more reassured. It makes sense that changing your focus to the task of reaching your new destination could push away the short term memory stored task you intended to perform. I personally deal with this by recollecting my steps, asking the people around me what I was talking about, retracing my thoughts, or scrolling through my recent social media feeds to see what could have prompted my thought. Thank you for sharing:)
What a coincidence, I didn't even notice that we shared that image until you pointed it out. :)
DeleteHi Raymond,
ReplyDeleteI can’t believe we found the same picture, that was so funny to me. As for your question, that’s the dilemma, isn’t it? If I knew I forgot it, wouldn’t that imply that I remembered that I had a task to do? Usually, I find that I just forget I have something to do altogether, rather than comprehending that I forgot something in the first place. That adds a bit more complication to the scenario, but what can you do about it? Realistically, I wouldn’t remember to record everything I have to do down (although that is a good habit to get into). I think that would certainly help a lot in improving my grades.
Sincerely,
Sean Wang
My life must be an endless mine field of doorways because I always come to ask myself this question: "What am I doing again?" It is almost comical how many times I have to do it. One second, I may be doing a chemistry FRQ, the next second, I forget what the question was even asking. I just attributed this to my inability to focus or maybe the fact that I delve too far into one step and forget the point of the entire question because I was wracking my brain on it. If you ever sat in a group with me, you can testify to these moments. To work around it on tests, I made it a habit to write down all of my work, and in hindsight, it still does not fix the issue. This happens on a much larger scale when I am writing: I may pull out a piece of evidence and elaborate on it only to forget the significance of the evidence. Maybe I just have the memory of a goldfish because as I am writing this comment, I realize that I forgot the main point of this comment.
ReplyDeleteHi Raymond,
ReplyDeleteOh my god, the doorway effect has been happening to me for a lifetime! I had no idea it was an actual phenomenon experienced by others; I had just chalked it up to unfortunate lapses in my memory. There have been so many moments where I have gone up to my room to fetch something, and as soon as I enter my room, I completely forget why I went there in the first place. I am thankful to have an explanation for this after so many years.
Sincerely,
Krish
Hi Raymond,
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how all of us go through this phenomenon, yet we didn't realize it's an actual, established, effect. I didn't realize the role of doors in this until I realized that the only time I do forget a piece of information is when I pass a doorway. That was pretty cool to think about. In my old house where we had two stories, I would experience this effect way more often than I do now (in my family's one story house). One of the reasons I was so persistent on not wanting to live in a 2+ story home anymore was partly due to the doorway effect, which caused me to climb up and down the stairs many more times a day than necessary!
Hey Raymond, the doorway effect is incredibly annoying. I am constantly multitasking, and it's extremely unhelpful when I forget what I needed to do. It always seems to act up when I'm in a rush to be somewhere, which is the worst. I understand why it happens, but it's very inconvenient. I definitely learned a lot from your post. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Raymond,
ReplyDeleteI swear to god this happens to me so much. This one day I was asked to get a pen so I went to my room to get one and I forgot. I saw my computer and I thought i came to work on something. Later, my parents called and asked me if I got the pen. Crazy! On another note, I wonder where the 10 chunks of memory came from. It sounds a lot like how memory in computers work, with some exact number of chunks of things it can store.
Sincerely,
Vivan Waghela
The number of chunks is debatable, but most sources put the number of chunks between 5 and 9.
DeleteHi Raymond,
ReplyDeleteWhile I will admit that the doorway effect is very very annoying, it always makes me laugh at how stupid I feel when I stand in the same spot for over 15 seconds trying to figure out what it is that I forgot. The on exception to this is during tests. I feel like during tests, I tend to focus all my attention on a singular step of the question I am doing. As a result, when I move on the the next step, I always seem to forget the context of the question as a whole and have to reread the prompt to continue on, which always seems to slow me down.
Yi-Kuan C.
Hi Raymond,
ReplyDeleteI experience this effect very often. A lot of the times, I'm looking for something like my phone and I walk all the way downstairs only to forget what I was looking for. The way that I address this is I either sit down and think about it for a little bit or I go back to the place where I remember remembering what I was looking for. It sounds a bit odd, but it works sometimes. I also remember when I was a kid, my friend told me that a way to remember something you just forgot, you look side to side. I don't know if that actually works because I don't remember the outcome of when I tried it, but it would be interesting if it did.