Walking through a doorway affects memory

Have you noticed how older people often talk about “the hereafter”? We walk into a room and exclaim, “What am I here after?”

We’ve all experienced it: The frustration of entering a room and forgetting what we were going to do or get.

It’s a well-documented psychological effect called the “doorway effect” or “location updating effect”. It’s when a person’s short-term memory goes blank when passing through a doorway or moving from one location to another. Most often the memory loss would not have happened if the person had remained in the same place.

Research from University of Notre Dame suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses.

“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” says Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky.

“Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.”

In her experiment Radvansky asked college students to perform memory tasks while crossing a room and while exiting a doorway.

In the first experiment, subjects used a virtual environment and moved from one room to another, selecting an object on a table and exchanging it for an object at a different table. They did the same thing while simply moving across a room but not crossing through a doorway.

Radvansky found that the subjects forgot more after walking through a doorway compared to moving the same distance across a room, suggesting that the doorway or “event boundary” impedes their ability to retrieve thoughts or decisions made in a different room.

The second experiment in a real-world setting required subjects to conceal in boxes the objects chosen from the table and move either across a room or travel the same distance and walk through a doorway. The results in the real-world environment replicated those in the virtual world: walking through a doorway diminished subjects’ memories.

The final experiment was designed to test whether doorways actually served as event boundaries or if our ability to remember is linked to the environment in which a decision – in this case, the selection of an object – was created. Previous research has shown that environmental factors affect memory and that information learned in one environment is retrieved better when the retrieval occurs in the same context. Subjects in this leg of the study passed through several doorways, leading back to the room in which they started. The results showed no improvements in memory, suggesting that the act of passing through a doorway serves as a way the mind files away memories.

When I was a child my mother would sometimes enter a room and say she had forgotten what it was she wanted to tell me or what she had come to do in that room. She usually went back to the room where she had come from because, she said, “the idea she had forgotten was hanging in the air,” in that room.

I think Prof. Radvansky would have loved to have had my mother participate in one of her experiments.

Take three steps to healthier habits

Many of us make New Year’s resolutions that involve personal change. If you are like most people I know, you have already fallen off the wagon. Don’t despair; it’s never too late to learn a good habit.

When we want to make personal changes, most of us try to change too many things at once or set goals beyond our reach. When we make a mistake on the way to reaching that goal, we feel like a failure and just give up.

Take weight loss as an example. I might set out to loose five pounds in a month. A totally reasonable goal. Inevitably, I will have a setback and fail to loose the weight I wanted to. That’s not my cue to abandon my diet and exercise program.  It just means I need to figure out where my plan went wrong, refine the plan and then get on with it.

There’s nothing magical about New Year’s Day for personal change. You can choose any day to begin your journey for change. But the best day to change is “today.” Don’t put it off to tomorrow, because tomorrow never comes.

Most of the things we want to change in our lives come under the heading of “bad habits.”  A habit is just something we do over and over without thinking about it much. 

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible just to “cut out” a habit. The hole in your life left by not doing that behaviour will fill up at light speed. For example, what happens when I say, “For the next minute don’t think about elephants.” I immediately envision elephants of all shapes and sizes! You not only need to eliminate a behaviour, you need to find a substitute behaviour. Instead of not thinking about elephants, I might tell myself to think about kittens.

Keep your plan for change as simple as possible. In fact, three basic steps are all you need.

    •   Write down your plan.

    •   Identify the triggers for the behaviour you want to change in yourself and decide which behaviours you want to substitute.   

    •   Focus on doing the replacement behaviours every single time the triggers happen, for about 30 days.

Ask your friends and family to help you achieve your goal. Remember, we’re all in this together.

How to sooth the post-holiday blues

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Christmas has passed, the guests are gone, the wrapping paper is in the trash and you feel… blah! With all the buildup to the holidays, why do we feel blue when they are over?

The National Alliance on Mental Illness describes the holiday blues as feelings of anxiety and stress that come up around the holidays and may be due to unrealistic expectations or memories connected to the holiday season.

Gina Moffa, a New York psychotherapist,  says post-holiday blues are temporary.

“This can be akin to feeling sad, anxious, or depressed with the characteristics of seasonal affective disorder… Your sleep may be affected, energy levels, and even your ability to concentrate.”

Post-holiday blues can be caused by a variety of things including alcohol consumption, overeating, too many activities disrupting routines, lack of sleep, financial strain. Sadness at this time of year may be caused by grief over death of a loved one or loss of a relationship, loneliness or illnesses.

Taking care of yourself can help you cope with holidays blues:

  • drink enough water
  • move your body
  • get enough sleep
  • create or maintain strong boundaries as needed
  • connect with nourishing people around you
  • embracing moments of solitude and quiet
  • stick to a routine

The dark cold days of January seem to stretch out bleakly forever. But by taking care of yourself, as you would take care of others, you can learn to live with the letdown after the holidays.

Each days brings new opportunities. My wish for you is that this coming year will be your best yet.

How to show your love for humanity

During Advent, the four weeks leading to Christmas, I have focused my columns on the four themes of Advent: hope, peace, joy, love. You might wonder why I have difficulty writing about this last topic because popular culture speaks so glibly about love. Many many pop songs focus on romantic love. Ballads extol love of country, friends and family.

Philosophy describes four types of love:

  • Eros – erotic, passionate love
  • Phila – love of friends
  • Storge – love of parents
  • Agape – love of humanity

It is this fourth type of love, agape, that resonates most strongly with me during Advent. But how can we love humanity when there is so much fighting and hatred at home and abroad?

Gleaned from the Internet, here are some ways to show your love for humanity:

1.  Look for the good in people – We all have our good and bad sides. Don’t be quick to judge others based on the things they’ve done. Condemnation never brings out the best in people … altruism and sympathy do. Maybe all they need is for someone to understand them.

2. Smile – Don’t underestimate the power of a smile. A smile not only lightens up your face, it can also brighten someone’s day.

3. Give back to the community – Phone a shut-in. Volunteer a few hours for the Salvation Army. Make a donation to the food bank.

4. Treat others as equals – Let go of your biases and stereotypes. See people for who they are. Respect strangers the way you respect your parents. If even some of us do that, the world will be a better place.

5. Love yourself — You cannot give what you don’t have. Try to love yourself first. Give yourself a pat on the back. Avoid criticizing yourself. Take care of your physical and mental health. Eventually, that love will pour out  into the people around you. 6. Forgive — Whether it’s your family or a stranger, the best way of showing love is forgiveness. All of us can make mistakes but not everyone can forgive. And if we do, we usually don’t extend that courtesy to people we don’t identify with. Everyone deserves second chances. We can learn to forgive and accept others despite our differences.

False laughter can bring joy

My friend Sharon teaches Laughter Yoga. These group sessions provide aerobic activity  because of the by deep breathing provided by laughter. Laughter Yoga elevates the mood and bond together group members.

The first time I participated in a Laughter Yoga session I was skeptical. I soon found myself giggling and smiling along with a room full of strangers. The principal of laughter yoga is that the brain cannot distinguish between phony laughing and real, spontaneous laughter.

It combines laughter exercises with yoga breathing techniques which bring more oxygen to the body and brain. It helps us to feel more energetic and joyful. Also sessions are energetic and interactive, I always feel more relaxed and at peace at the end of the session.

Laughing yYoga is said to help reduce stress, promote a greater sense of well-being, lower blood pressure and help you connect with others.

Laughter Yoga was first spoken about in Madan Kataria’s 2002 book, ‘Laugh For No Reason”. His method involves prolonged voluntary laughter. It works on the principle that voluntary laughter has the same effect on mental well-being as spontaneous laughter.

Many people in my age group are you experiencing limitations in their life which make it more difficult to find joy every day living. My diminished eyesight previous me from easily participating in some of the activities that bring me joy. Watercolors painting is frustrating because I no longer see coloyrs in same way and I have difficulty seepng fine detail. Similarly, my deafness interferes with my enjoyment a of some activities, such as choral singing. When my hearing aid malfunctioned recently, I found it difficult to carry on a  conversation, as soon withdrew into a shell ofl silence.

The third week of Advent invites us to focus on joy. we can still find joy despite our limitations. Using the same principles as Laughter Yoga, we can whistle a happy tune and soon our brain will think we are happy. We can smile at ourself in the mirror and fell better for even a minute.

We can find joy, even In these dark days of winter.

How do you imagine peace?

Irina Zherebkina, a Ukrainian philosopher and author, spent the first year of the war in Ukraine under bombardment in Kharkiv. She reluctantly fled her homeland in March but still believes that peace must be imagined into being. She believes that the world powers should not send weapons to Ukraine but should, instead, send peace delegations to Moscow.

Peace is the theme for the second week of Advent. Today there are wars raging in over 100 regions, including Ukraine, Palestine and North Africa. How can we possibly talk about peace when there is so much fear and hatred in the world?

The Dalai Lama said, “We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.” 

What does peace look like? We encourage peace in our inner life and we work for peace in our family and community. But what will that achievement of peace look like? What is the result of your dream for peace?

John Lennon understood this in the ‘70s when he wrote “Imagine“. We must be able to see a world of joy in order to move through peace and create the world we desire.

Mother Theresa said, “Peace begins with a smile.”

You can find peace within yourself even if it is only five minutes. Set aside the depression of focusing on the past. Forego the anxiety of focusing on the future. Although you are a powerful person, you have zero control over the past or the future. Instead, live peacefully for just this moment. Live life in the present and be at peace. Imagine what peace might look like for yourself, for your friends and family, for your community. Beginning with yourself you can imagine peace.

Hope is like the sun hidden by clouds

Saskatchewan is blessed with many hours of sunshine, even during the coldest months. But the first week of November was damp and dark. Freezing rain kept me inactive indoors. The general gloom was depressing.

My thoughts drifted to a song our church choir often sang for Remembrance Day entitled “Inscription of Hope” by Z. Randall Stroope.

Using facts from various sources and a folk tune, Stroope wrote a song about the Holocaust. It is a story about survival, belief and resilience, even in the most disparring circumstances. It is a reminder of the tragic results of prejudice and hate toward other people. But it is also a reminder that hope held firm will eventually overcome the darkness.

The song was inspired by words inscribed on the walls of a  cellar in Cologne, Germany, where Jews were hiding from the Nazis during the Second World War. Hope was all they had to hold onto, hope showed the way to a brighter tomorrow.

The opening lines of the song have come back, year after year, to encourage me:

I believe in the sun

even when it is not shining

and I believe in love

even when there’s no one there

When I am swallowed up by the gloom of my darkest thoughts, I sometime find solace in these lines from the song:

… sometimes in this suffering

and hopeless despair

my heart cries for shelter to know somone’s there

but a voice rises within me saying hold on my child

I’ll give you strength, I’ll give you hope, just stay a little while

Remembered poetry and music can be a great source of comfort when the world seems hopeless. As we begin Advent, I wish for you a moment of hope in these darkest days of the year. During Advent, the four weeks leading to Christmas, I attempt to write about the four Advent themes: hope, peace, joy and love. It is challenging to find a new way to approach the topics each year. Next week, I will write about peace.

Things my mother taught me

Robert Fulghum famously wrote “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

Well, I never went to kindergarten. It wasn’t an option for me. In fact, I started Grade 1 in a one-room school where my class consisted of exactly one boy and one girl.

So, it was up to my mother to teach me all the important things that you learn before you go to school. Mother taught me to:

            • Brush your teeth — An important lesson if you want to have a pretty smile and good health.

            • Pray before going to bed — Even if you don’t pray, spend some time counting your blessings instead of counting sheep. It will reduce stress and improve your outlook on life

            • Eat your veggies — Good habits start young. I was blessed with hearty farm meals, straight from the garden my mother tended with care. I’ve never met a vegetable I couldn’t eat. And I enjoy most of them.

            • Say please and thank you — Good manners smooth social interactions. Studies show that a job applicant with good manners is more frequently the successful candidate for the job.

            • Carry a clean handkerchief  — Mom’s advice really means be prepared. Anticipate what the day might bring you and plan how you will cope with those situations. Having a plan allows you to get more done and to be more efficient doing it.

            • Sit up straight  — Good posture not only looks good, it also feels good. Opening up the chest allows the lungs and digestive system to work more efficiently.

            • Take time to observe the wonders of nature  — Early, early one morning my mother called me to look out the east window at the Morning Star. It was a special moment we shared quietly as the rest of the family slept.  Now that she has passed on, I think about her whenever I see Venus, the Morning Star. Mother also pointed out flowers, birds and trees. It was an education that I started at her knee. It is a daily joy to add to that education by discovering the newness of the world around me.

 Thank you Mom for teaching me everything I needed to know.

Living by a toddler’s rules

Toddlers have “rules” for living:

      •     If I want it, it’s mine.

      •     If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.

      •     If I can take it away from you, it’s mine.

      •     If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine …

We can laugh at this list of “rules” for toddlers, but it says something about our belief in the importance of sharing.

It’s heart-warming to see a tiny person spontaneously giving a food treat or a toy to a playmate. But we are horrified when they snatch it back, yelling, “Mine!”

We like it when children play together and share things. But most toddlers find it hard to share things. We might call a child “greedy” or “selfish” and insist that he or she share an item with a playmate. Refusing to share is often treated as a crime in the eyes of adults. We want children to be generous, kind and co-operative, so we demand that they share.

Demanding that children share ignores their feelings and does not truly teach them to share. The irony of sharing is that when children know they are not required to share, they are most likely to do so!

Sometimes sharing should wait. It is important to learn to wait to use the item that someone else is using. Learning to wait and taking turns are important skills for getting along with other people.

Sharing is giving up something because you choose to, not because you are told to or forced to. Sometimes the toddler just isn’t done with it yet.  Holding onto an item, and not sharing it immediately, may be an important step in learning to respect yourself. The child learns “I am worthy” of having or using this item. Forcing the child to give up a toy may only make him more possessive of it in the future.

We can also foster sharing by praising it. Give the child an opportunity to share positively. Allow her to pass around a bowl of treats. Play family games that require simple, short-term sharing of an item.

It has been said that sharing is “the religion of the sandbox set.” We realize that sharing is a very important skill. Sharing helps us get along smoothly and happily in groups. Sharing helps us live together peacefully in loving families.

Live each day as if it matters

During the Remembrance Day season, I’m always touched by the movies depicting the lives of young men and women who were ripped from the routine of life to face imminent death during wartime. In the movies, some spent their last hours before deployment getting drunk. Some curled into a ball and cried. But most of those brave young people spent their last hours at home with the people they loved. They built on their relationships, living their lives to the utmost.

None of us has any idea how long we have to live. However, we act as if we are going to live forever. We postpone things that, deep down, we know we want to do. We spend most of our time and energy doing things that aren’t all that important. Sometimes we just idle away the hours.

What would happen if you lived each day as if it were your last? How would your life change? How many of the following things would you like to do, but feel you don’t have time for? What other things can you come up with? Try doing some of them every day for the rest of your life… for however long that is.

  • Start the book you’ve been meaning to read.
  • Sew on the button that keeps you from wearing a shirt.
  • Paint a room.
  • Make a child smile.
  • Spend an hour with an aging relative.
  • Clean out a drawer.
  • Get a makeover.
  • Try a new food.
  • Start learning the words to a song.
  • Adopt a pet from the animal shelter.
  • Spend an hour making notes about what you would like to do with the rest of your life.
  • Phone, write a letter or send an email to a faraway friend.
  • Start growing a plant.
  • Turn off your electronics and talk to the people who live with you.
  • Play a game.
  • Dance.
  • Take an hour and do nothing.
  • Really look into someone’s eyes.
  • Say to someone, “I love you.”

(The ideas for this column were gleaned from the book Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson.)