Forgotten why you walked into a room? New insight puts memory lapse in context

The phenomenon known as the “doorway effect” – when someone forgets what they went into a room for – is not actually about doors at all, researchers have found.

The situation of having walked into a room only to forget why you did so is familiar to many people, however it was brought to prominence in a study by researchers from the University of Notre Dame in the US in 2011.

It was concluded that the act of passing through the doorway caused the brain to “refresh” and dump its current memories because they were less likely to be relevant in the “new” room.

Now researchers from Bond University have expanded that research, finding that…