
Walking through doorways causes forgetting (2016) - stefap2
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470218.2015.1101478?journalCode=qjpd
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crazygringo
Completely true. And funny, because any actor who memorizes lines could tell
you that.

Seriously -- if you memorize lines in your apartment and you've got them down
pat, then you show up to your class/theater/set/audition and suddenly you have
difficulty remembering them.

Because -- and this is common knowledge in acting -- your brain has
subconsciously associated the lines with your apartment.

Which is why, once you've memorized the lines at home, you then take a walk
and practice and re-memorize them again. Then while you're on the subway you
practice and fix them again. And when you show up early to your
class/theater/set/audition you spend 10 minutes practicing them _again_ , to
associate them with the space where you're performing.

You just have to. It's how memorization works. For whatever reason, it's
associated with your mental location.

Same reason that when plays are on tour, they try to have a full rehearsal
run-through in each new theater before a performance. You need to associate
your memory with the new theater and fix your mistakes during rehearsal, not
during performance.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
Is there a way to hack around this?

I'm (involuntarily) great at remembering passwords when I'm at my desk at
home, or a PIN when paying for petrol, but at other times in the "wrong"
context, I'm totally blank. I read something a while back about methods for
subconscious recollection based on an individuals location / state of mind
context.

Just now, I forcefully remembered a password by picturing myself at my desk at
home. But now maybe I've re-contextualized the memory and I'll struggle to
recall it when I actually need it.

~~~
em-bee
something that helps is to block out as much external stimuli as possible. for
example, when memorizing a pin, i focus on the grid of numbers. for a
password, i focus on my computer, or something abstract related to the service
i am signing on to.

i have the benefit of traveling a lot, so my computer becomes an always
available item of focus, whereas the surroundings turn into a blur because
they always change

~~~
perl4ever
"for a password, i focus on my computer"

I'm not sure what that means. When I have a password that is completely
random, but well memorized and I typically use it on a desktop or laptop
keyboard, I tend to find it impossible at first to enter it on a phone,
because it seems to be essentially all in muscle memory that isn't applicable
to typing on the phone.

~~~
em-bee
it means i ignore the room i am in. i pretend the room does not exist. there
is only me and a laptop.

that way, i get the same feeling of the situation no matter where i actually
am.

~~~
perl4ever
Ah. But for me, there is only me and the _keyboard_. And different kinds of
keyboards may not have anything in common.

~~~
em-bee
pretty much the same thing :-)

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w0mbat
I think this is a cheap optimization the brain uses. Every time our location
changes, it clears short term memory to have a fresh slate and be aware in the
new situation. Think of it as setting up a new stack frame.

I think it evolved so that a caveman could exit the cave and immediately
forget what he was thinking about before and be fully aware, watching for
predators and looking for food. He can start climbing a tree and suddenly the
whole word is that tree and that task.

Nowadays that's why we walk into another room and can't remember why we went
there, or we open the fridge door and can't remember what we wanted. I turn on
my phone to do something, but somehow the phone itself is a new context and I
end up doing something else.

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JoeAltmaier
Lots of brain connections work with one sense controlling how another is
processed. In a car you can talk to a passenger all day and drive fine. But
answer your phone, and suddenly you're absent and distracted.

I experimented to find out why. When I was talking to a friend in the
passenger seat, I held up a card to prevent myself from seeing the passenger
out of the corner of my eye - and suddenly I was absent and distracted.

Maybe its because when we don't see someone we're conversing with, we have to
create a mental model of them to compensate. Because we're built to see the
people we interact with, and our brains may just work that way. And the work
of creating the mental model interferes with driving (prevents processing of
the alternate mental model of the road situation?)

Anyway, for what its worth.

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7373737373
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus)

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vagab0nd
Somewhat off-topic: I have this weird problem that if I close my eyes and
imagine walking towards a doorway and going through it, I can't. I can get
pretty close to the door, but just can't go through it. It's like the brain
doesn't compute for some reason.

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contingencies
This is why some people swear by more screens. I think it helps them keep
mental context.

~~~
perl4ever
One of the most annoying things about computers these days is the number of
applications that put everything in tabs, and/or modal dialogs. The whole
point of a GUI, to me, is that you can view information from multiple places
side by side, not just swap between them. In the mid-80s, Apple wrote copious
documentation about why modes, and modal dialogs, are bad, and tabs were not a
standard part of the interface either.

As far as multiple screens go, it's not just viewing things side by side, but
having boundaries to snap to. Maybe it would be handy to kind of divide very
large monitors into subscreens...

~~~
contingencies
A project for perl/tk? :)

