Walking through doorways causes forgetting, research shows

[Triple Zero]

http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/27476-walking-through-doorways-causes-forgetting-new-research-shows/

[Cain]

Or does the act of forgetting cause us to seek out a doorway to pass through?

[Triple Zero]

Well if it did, we certainly wouldn't remember it, so it's equally likely, I'd say.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I have heard of a form of environmental awareness training that has you consciously tap every door you go through until you do it reflexively and finally subconsciously after MUCH repetition.  The Idea was specifically to increase your awareness of going from one set of variables to another.  Neat experiment.

[Elder Iptuous]

My friend and i had mused about the phenomenon of locational effects on memory before.
we both noted that it seems that returning to the location of an event or thought allows for easier recall.
i would be interested if they did any follow up research on whether passing back through the doors has a statistical significance on recall.

incidently, if you ever are driving down a road that you frequently travel and it occurs to you to meditate upon the notion that "this is the place that i think this thought", it can haunt you forever and ever.

I have heard of a form of environmental awareness training that has you consciously tap every door you go through until you do it reflexively and finally subconsciously after MUCH repetition.  The Idea was specifically to increase your awareness of going from one set of variables to another.  Neat experiment.

to what end? 

[Reginald Ret]

  That's probably not forgetting, that's compartimentalizing. Step back through the door and make as many as possible other variables similar to when you did remember and presto! meeeemorieeees.

A fun trick to prove this to yourself is to think of a list of things you can buy with 300 bucks in several different situations like work/home/bar/with friends.
Make sure to never write anything down because then the context will be *writing* instead of work/home/etc. Don't bother remembering the lists just keep repeating this exercise in several situations.
After a couple of weeks of repeating this try to remember the lists at the same time and you should have a different list for every situation.

[Xooxe]

incidently, if you ever are driving down a road that you frequently travel and it occurs to you to meditate upon the notion that "this is the place that i think this thought", it can haunt you forever and ever.

I did that with a staircase that I used to walk up every day at school. I started to notice that the time I spent between walking the stairs felt like it passed in a blink of an eye, but only while walking the stairs. My entire life temporarily condensed into climbing those bastard stairs. STAIRS.

As for doorways: In Polish "door" is completely plural, like "scissors", "glasses", etc, in English. It's as if there's a grammatical understanding that a door belongs to two rooms.

Some informations for you.

[Elder Iptuous]

As for doorways: In Polish "door" is completely plural, like "scissors", "glasses", etc, in English. It's as if there's a grammatical understanding that a door belongs to two rooms.

that's interesting!
one can refer to a 'pair of scissors' or a 'pair of glasses' or pliers or pants, etc...  is this also the case in polish? and if so, is a doorway referred to pairwise?  further, the items i mentioned all have two distinct and symmetrical parts...  if it is the case that a door can be referred to pairwise, is the mental image afforded by the reference that of the two sides of the door, i presume?

[The Wizard Joseph]

I have heard of a form of environmental awareness training that has you consciously tap every door you go through until you do it reflexively and finally subconsciously after MUCH repetition.  The Idea was specifically to increase your awareness of going from one set of variables to another.  Neat experiment.

to what end? 

The training had to do with combat awareness.  I didn't go through it myself.  I think the idea was to build a more conscious awareness of any new environment.  The tapping serves as an anchor for the conscious behavior of paying more attention while transitioning from one place to another.  Eventually you're not tapping doors physically anymore but the additional attention paid has become reflexive by that point.  Doorways can make pretty good spots for ambush.  Might have a lot to do with this psychological disrupt between places.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The training had to do with combat awareness.

DO YOU STARE AT GOATS?

[Freeky]

The training had to do with combat awareness.

DO YOU STARE AT GOATS?

And then he accidentally the goat.

[The Wizard Joseph]

The training had to do with combat awareness.

DO YOU STARE AT GOATS?

And then he accidentally the goat.

I um, er, eh... I would never accidentally a goat of my own free will.  There were A LOT of mind control mazers on me at the time.. After the goat fell over they told me about the sedative they'd given it.  For a minute there though... yeah I thought I accidentally the goat.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The training had to do with combat awareness.

DO YOU STARE AT GOATS?

And then he accidentally the goat.

I um, er, eh... I would never accidentally a goat of my own free will.  There were A LOT of mind control mazers on me at the time.. After the goat fell over they told me about the sedative they'd given it.  For a minute there though... yeah I thought I accidentally the goat.

DO YOU FUCKING STARE AT GOATS?

TGRR,
Will shamelessly fuck with anyone who doesn't catch the reference.

[Triple Zero]

This makes me think btw, either the forgetting thing also works slightly after you pass through the door, or perhaps the outside-stairs-down-to-the-streets¹ counts as a second "doorway", either way it explains why I always forget if I locked my door properly or not. And then I have to go back to check (because it would really suck if I actually forgot and someone broke in) and curse this very mild OCD symptom cause it's locked 99.99% of the time. It helps if I have to take some complex action, like putting my keys back into a hard-to-reach pocket, but I suppose at some point I'll get used to that too

¹ how do you call this? translations say "portiek" is "porch" but that's not right. you go up the stone stairs (still outside) and there's two front doors one to my house and one to the upstairs neighbours.



Also PANTS are SINGULAR in Dutch because it's impossible for us to half-ass that sort of thing.

[LMNO]

I've heard that's called a "stoop".