# Remembering change: Interdependence between change awareness and meaningful connection in achieving proactive facilitation

## TL;DR

This study explores how noticing changes and forming meaningful connections affects memory interference when recalling recently learned information.

## Contribution

The study reveals how meaningful connections and change awareness interact to influence proactive facilitation or interference in memory.

## Key findings

- Proactive facilitation was reduced when materials lacked meaningful connections.
- Proactive interference occurred even with meaningful connections if changes were not recalled.
- Change awareness and meaningful connections are interdependent in shaping memory outcomes.

## Abstract

Two experiments investigated proactive facilitation (PF) or proactive interference (PI) in the recall of recently learned targets, under conditions of assessing the detection and recollection of target changes across two learning phases (with A-B/A-D word pairs). Some changes established meaningful connections across the phases; others did not. Task instructions on the subsequent cued-recall test (Experiment 1) or during Phase 2 study (Experiment 2) guided participants (university students) to monitor and report the changes. Accuracy in cued recall conditionalized on measures of change awareness replicated previous findings in establishing conditions for PF and PI. However, PF was much reduced for unconnected materials. Moreover, when change recollection failed, PI occurred even under conditions of meaningful connections (Experiment 1). Discussion emphasizes this interdependence of meaningfulness of connections and change awareness in influencing whether and how memory for earlier events affects memory for more recent ones.