Forget the Tower of Hanoi: A new ecologically valid test of executive function

Here’s a problem I encountered the other day.

I’d left my keys at home (a bad start). But I’ve learned to arrange life to allow for cognitive failures, and I knew there was a spare key in the keybox in my PA’s office.

My PA was on holiday, and her door was locked, but I was not foiled by this because there’s a spare key to her room in another keybox (#2) outside her door.

Both keyboxes have numeric codes, but codes for the keyboxes have been set to be memorable, even by someone with a barely functioning hippocampus.

So I managed to get into my PA’s office, extract key for my office, lock up her office, enter my office, and do a full day’s work.

It was going in the other direction, restoring my office key to the keybox, that proved challenging.

Before you read on, you might want to give your frontal lobes a little work-out: what should the correct sequence of events be?

Well, here’s what I did:

1.    Go down corridor to keybox to retrieve key to PA’s office. Unable to read the number codes without spectacles.
2.    Return to my office to get spectacles. Open keybox. Release key to PA’s office. Enter office.
3.    Open keybox #1.
4.    Put key in keybox and lock keybox.
5.    Find myself outside door of PA office attempting to lock the door with wrong key .
6.    Re-open keybox #1 and extract key to PA office.
7.    Put my office key in keybox #1 and lock keybox.
8.    Lock door to PA office.
9.    Return key to PA office to keybox #2.
10.    Return to my office to pack up computer and stuff, only to realise….
          I had failed to lock my office door.

DOH!

But to look on the bright side: I realise I’ve discovered a real-life version of the Tower of Hanoi.