It’s a common experience—entering a room, only to realize you’ve forgotten what you went there to do. It’s been documented in research studies, too. Memory is worse after passing through a doorway than after walking the same distance within a single room.
Did you know that the “doorway effect” is actually a good strategy to optimize memory?
Some forms of memory seem to be optimized to keep information ready-to-hand until its shelf life expires, and then purge that information in favour of new stuff. Walking through a doorway is a good time to purge your memory because whatever happened in the old room is likely to become less relevant now that you have changed rooms.
We can’t keep everything ready-to-hand, and most of the time this strategy functions beautifully.
It’s only when it doesn’t work for us, that we become aware of it.
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