The “Doorway Effect” – forgetting why you entered a room

237 点作者 edwinksl将近 7 年前

23 条评论

kartan将近 7 年前

I lived in a one-room (plus bathroom) apartment for half a year. It was an awful experience. The apartment was very well designed with nice furniture and very very centric. But it felt claustrophobic.I have lived since then in similar apartments, equally small, but with at least 2 rooms (living room and bedroom). It feels so much better.At first, one-room looks like is going to be better. There is more space as you don't have inner walls. But when you play games, watch tv, cook and sleep all in the same room it feels that there is something wrong.Getting up in the morning, leaving the bedroom and going to the living room makes a big difference. The context-switching is welcome. It is also easier when going to sleep.

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cyberferret将近 7 年前

For me, it is "new browser tab" effect these days. I will often be reading a website, then think "Oh, I must research this thing they are talking about" or else I will remember some other thing that I have to do online, so I will open a new browser window in the background.But then I will get distracted by something else on the current web page - for even a few seconds - and when I go to the new tab to do what I had planned to do, I sit there in complete blank befuddlement, staring at the empty page and wondering what on earth I was supposed to look up.

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21将近 7 年前

How about some reproduction first.I'm sorry, but we live in an age where decades old famous social sciences experiments are proved to be frauds.I have stopped giving any credit to the various "scientific study proves X does/is Y in psychology/social sciences/diet". Every day we have a new "eating red cookies in the morning" makes you "less likely to lie" study.

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tniemi将近 7 年前

I personally think that people unconsciouslly hated the start menu of Windows 8 because of this phenomenom. You open it and the whole screen changes. Worst possible UI.

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npunt将近 7 年前

This is the same phenomenon as when you open your phone and for a brief moment you don't remember why you did.With phones its worse because all the pretty icons confuse and beckon you to fall back on opening whatever app you habitually open when bored.This property of our cognition is why we should better scaffold intentionality into our devices, though that is an difficult design challenge.

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cjcampbell将近 7 年前

Call it ADHD or what you want, but I tend to experience this a bit more than most people I know. Applying to tech, it's the number one reason Windows 8 didn't work for me. The loss of context when the start screen took over was too disorienting.

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egypturnash将近 7 年前

Ever since I learnt about this, I have made a practice of saying what I'm doing out loud as I leave one room and enter another one to do the thing I want to do. So I have that moment of "I walked through a door and flushed my brain's to-do cache", but it's quickly remedied by the fact that I loaded up a few words describing what I want to do the instant before I stepped through the door into the longer pipeline of brain-to-mouth.It helps me, at least.

Bizarro将近 7 年前

I'm not sure about this article. For as bad as my memory has always been (and especially bad for being a programmer), I don't have many "why am I in here" moments.It does happen occasionally, but as someone who is thinking about "work-on-the-fly" wherever I am, I think I'm just accustomed to noodling over work (or other background processes) "in the background".Since lots of us are engineer-types, are we more apt at that background processing and then when we hit our primary target (in here to look for keys), we're able to shit into primary focus mode?Now if I'm searching for keys, noodling over some design in the background, and then my wife pops me with a question while I'm lumbering through the house, then I'm in trouble;)

tejtm将近 7 年前

My wife refers to this as "Male refrigerator blindness"It is also why I prefer the NASA mission control approach to monitor layout

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reallymental将近 7 年前

It's context switching, I face this daily due to my OCD. The damn doorways are always a problem.I'm not very well versed on this subject, but have there been any experiments conducted with a doorway in the middle of a basketball court or a field?I'm sure that would mess me up for a good couple of minutes as well. It's not just doorways that lead to a different room, it's just the fact that there's a doorway present, that changes my context of things.Maybe I'm the weird one.

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UncleEntity将近 7 年前

I don't even need a doorway, I can easily forget what I was up to between thinking "need keys" and walking over to where the keys live.Kind of annoying TBH...

okket将近 7 年前

A human 'context switch' seems to be equally expensive as for a computer.

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owaislone将近 7 年前

This happens to me quite often and lately, it has started to creep into my computer usage. I often forget why I opened a new browser tab.

hapnin将近 7 年前

I'm old and now believe in the hereafter. I walk into a room and ask myself, "What am I here after?"

moogly将近 7 年前

There must be something wrong with me, because I don't recognise myself in this at all. I'm not sure I've ever experienced this.

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dlwdlw将近 7 年前

Doors trigger our minds loading screens. Memory is loaded from disk. Old context is ejected new is injected. The ego or “i” concept is allotted small attention/memory to carry over stuff. If attention is lost in the middle, the background swap can happen subconscioslu and something you thought you placed nearby can be moved.

gymshoes将近 7 年前

I think this effect happens of the many distractions in life.Whenever I open a new tab it shows a list of the most popular search trends. I forget what I was supposed to search because fomo.To combat this I have a to do list app where I conveniently list all distractions and forget about them. It's easy too because I know I have that saved for later.

fredley将近 7 年前

According to The Meaning of Liff, I have always thought of this as "Woking".<a href="http://tmoliff.blogspot.com/2012/06/woking-participial-vb.html?m=1" rel="nofollow">http://tmoliff.blogspot.com/2012/06/woking-participial-vb.ht...</a>

barcoder将近 7 年前

If something is troubling my mind I will walk through a door and voila! My brain has found something else to think about.

hangtwenty将近 7 年前

This thread is a great example of why I love hackernews. It's these curious ones.

erikig将近 7 年前

I'm pretty sure I've suffered from this from the moment I was born

mylons将近 7 年前

also an interesting effect with psychedelics

eruci将近 7 年前

I usually forget why I exited