Topic Tuesday #92 2014/04/22 "Why Am I Here Again?"

It has happened to all of us (there is a reason I can say that truthfully). We pickup something to take care of in another room and walk there and once we arrive, the purpose of our journey has eluded us. In our confusion we may just wander back to our point of origin only to realize why we set off in the first place. we beat ourselves up over being too tired or any other plausible excuse for our forgetfulness. 

Here is the result of a recent study, doorways trigger our short term memory to "clear". They are calling it the "doorway effect".

"...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 favor of new stuff.  Radvansky and colleagues call this sort of memory representation an “event model,” and propose that walking through a doorway is a good time to purge your event models because whatever happened in the old room is likely to become less relevant now that you have changed venues."

Many things can trigger this same clearing of short term memory. Such as a phone call or a door bell, maybe a child needing attention. All things that can distract for a moment and take you out of your concentration could derail your train of thought. It also is something that be have very little control over. Some things the brain is just predisposed to do, such as the phenomenon of pareidolia, which represents our predilection for seeing faces and hearing voices when the genuine article is just some wind or clever trick of light and shadow. 

It's hard to understand, but sometimes, you just can't trust your own brain. But knowing is.... wait... what was I doing? Oh year, getting a snack from the fridge. Why did I open the refrigerator? Huh....  Right... Sometimes you should just make some external reminders and don't trust that you will remember things. You may laugh at the person with sticky notes on their bathroom mirror, but they may know... or remember something that you forgot just walking through the door.