Here’s The REAL Reason You Forget What You’re Doing When You Enter A Room

YOUR forgetfulness might not be your fault.

Author:
Melanie Donahoo
Updated:
Dec 18, 2018
Original:
Jun 21, 2017

It's ironic that I started writing this post, got distracted, and forgot why I sat down in the first place. But let's put my issues aside for a second and talk about the good news— YOUR forgetfulness might not be your fault. That's right, science has your back on this one. In fact, science says you're totally normal if you forget things when you walk into a room.

You may blame your forgetfulness on mom brain, lack of sleep, ADD, or the fact that you have to remember approximately 7,524 things throughout the day, but one scientific study reveals there's more to it than that. In fact, it says it's perfectly normal to forget things when you walk into a room. Hooray!

So if you clicked on this post and immediately forgot why you were here, there's a good chance your brain is working just fine. The study itself used three different experiments to test people's brains. In the first experiment, researchers created a video game that involved people moving virtually into different rooms while carrying an object. Every now and then a picture of an object would appear on the screen and participants would have to click "yes" if it matched the object they were holding. The second experiment used a real environment to test people's memory as they moved from room to room. Both of these scenarios suggested there's a "doorway effect" that happens when you move from room to room.

The basic idea behind the doorway effect is simple. Every time you enter a new room, your mind registers the space as a clean slate. It's kind of like opening a new browser window in your brain every time you cross a threshold. When you're running back and forth between rooms, it's hard for your brain to keep pace.

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The bad news is there's no real cure for it. The good news is you can take comfort in knowing you're not losing your mind. I guess that's one less thing to remember to worry about. So carry on, friends. Carry on.