quicko: dorm room syndrome

This is about the Americans.  Or quite possibly just about me.  But it dawned on me the other day that I suffer from a bit of dorm room syndrome -- never quite realizing that, in fact, I have a space of more than the size of four single beds that I'm allowed to move about it.  What's that psychological thing where people or animals who've been in captivity or a cage or something are suddenly allowed out but don't go because they're so unused to doing that?  Is it the elephant that'd been chained to a rock but then the rock is removed and it doesn't have to stay but does anyway?  I think I'm vaguely like that.  Sure I have a fully functional dining/living area with a separate kitchen even, yet I find myself almost inevitably cooped up in my own room at my desk.

I was never like that at home -- I had the run of our whole house and I rarely relegated myself to my room (quite possibly because the computer was elsewhere) -- yet I have this suspicion that it was dorm room living that got me so entirely used to being very easily confined in a very small space for hours on end and not thinking twice about it.  Which makes me think this could be an American thing, seeing as how dorm-oriented we are, at least for four very formative years.

But who knows.  Maybe it's just me.