Doorstep Effect – Why You Suddenly Forget What You Wanted in the Kitchen – Know


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Do you feel like you’re becoming more and more forgetful? Maybe it’s just the doorstep effect. It occurs in the best families – or apartments.

The phenomenon is familiar from everyday life: We are sitting on the sofa in the living room and want to get a glass of water. We get up and go to the kitchen. But once there, we have no idea why we went into the kitchen.

The «doorstep effect»

The phenomenon is well known in psychology and even has its own name: “doorstep effect”. The theory behind it: Our brain automatically divides our everyday experiences into episodes. When we get a new one Entering the room begins a new episode for us. And with that, the information from the previous episode is “covered up” by new information and is more easily forgotten.

Working memory overload?

A team led by psychologist Gabriel Radvansky has repeatedly demonstrated the doorstep effect in experiments over the past 20 years. When we change environment, our brain needs capacity and energy to process the new context.

This has an impact on our working and short-term memory. Working memory stores impressions and information for a few seconds. If our attention is now drawn into a new environment, previously stored content can fall out of working memory more quickly.

Experiments in real and virtual space


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In the studies by Gabriel Radvansky, the doorway effect also location updating effect called because the new environment demands processing power from us. In the experiments, test persons had to carry different objects in different colors – such as cubes, discs or crosses – from one table to another and put them in a box. Then they were asked which object and which color they had just stowed away.

In one test condition, two tables were in the same room, in the other they had to change rooms in between. When the subjects had to change rooms, they had a higher error rate and a longer response time than without the room change. The walking distance was the same in both conditions. The experiments were carried out in virtual and real rooms. The effect occurred in both.

When interpreting the results, it should be noted that in everyday life we ​​rarely have to remember the nature of objects in this way. We are more likely to remember intentions or tasks (‹I wanted to get a glass of water›) that are more directly linked to our personal motivation than abstract test items.

Does going back help?

So far, so close to everyday life. The result in one of Radvansky’s experiments is less intuitive. The participants could not remember better even when they went back to the room of origin. “This may be due to the special experimental setup of these studies, in which predetermined objects were to be remembered and the premises were often virtual or not very familiar,” says expert Sebastian Horn.

“However, it is often helpful for retrieval to restore the situation in which the information was originally stored.” To stay with the example above: we go back into the living room and immediately remember: we wanted to get a glass of water!

Better library than pool

The fact that we remember better when we are back at the place of storage («encoding») or at least in a similar context is relatively well documented in memory research and is known as the «principle of encoding specificity».

“I recommend my students to create a context for learning that is similar to that which prevails during the exam,” says Sebastian Horn. So it’s better to go to the library than to the pool.

How we remember intentions


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Sebastian Horn is Senior Researcher at the Psychological Institute of the University of Zurich. He researches including the so-called prospective memory. Prospective memory is about the fact that an intention should come back to us at the right time (e.g. ‹buy some bread on the way home›).

It’s easy to forget intentions (e.g. when we send an email without the attachment). Sometimes, on the other hand, we still remember the existence of an intention (“I still wanted to do something after all”), but no longer remember the content (retrospective aspect of remembering). Prospective (remember that) and retrospective (remember what) memory must work well together for successful remembering in everyday life. In the case of the doorstep effect, the retrospective memory was primarily examined

doubts in research

But back to the doorstep effect: Recent research are somewhat more critical as to whether the effect is really that large and relevant. One Study in Australia could only reproduce the effectif the subjects were additionally distracted with a mental arithmetic task.

This also makes sense: We usually forget our intentions when our thoughts are elsewhere. Then the doorstep can be the straw that breaks the camel’s cup of memory.

The question of whether people who live in a loft without any doors ever forget anything has not yet been scientifically investigated. How do you say it so beautifully? “Further research is needed.”

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