Unlocking the mysteries of the doorway effect The so-called ‘doorway effect’ – forgetfulness caused by moving between rooms – is not as pronounced as previously thought and only occurs when the brain is working hard, new research shows. The doorway effect came to prominence after a 2011 study by researchers at the University of Notre Dame. They found that people who passed through doorways were prone to forgetting and theorised that crossing the threshold caused the brain to refresh because memories from the old room were less likely to be relevant in the new room. However, a follow-up study by a team at Bond University provides a different perspective on the phenomenon. Dr Oliver Baumann, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Bond University, says his team had participants wear virtual reality headsets and move through different rooms in a 3D virtual environment.
They had to memorise objects such as a blue cone and a yellow cross on tables in each room and then move from one table to the next. Sometimes the next table was in the same room and sometimes it was in another room, entered through an automatic sliding door. “At first we couldn’t find the doorway effect at all so we thought maybe people were too good - they were remembering everything,” Dr Baumann says. “So then we made it more difficult and got them to do backward counting tasks while moving around to load up their working memory. “Forgetting did now occur, telling us that overloading the participants’ memory made them more susceptible to the effect of the doorway. In other words, the doorway effect only occurs if we are cognitively in a vulnerable state.” But even then, the observed effect was
Dr Baumann believes it is not the doorway that triggers forgetting but transitioning to a different environment. “If the brain thinks it is in a different context, then those memories belong in a different network of information,” Dr Baumann says. “Overall that gives us greater capacity than if you have just one gigantic workspace where everything is connected. “But there is a cost to that. By transitioning between compartments we can lose things.” The study was published in BMC Psychology.
“If the brain thinks it is in a different context, then those memories belong in a different network of information.”
considerably less than in previous studies.
Dr Oliver Baumann Arch, Edition 28
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