The effect of temporal context on memory for art.

Although considerable research has been done on memory for temporal information, as well as on the relationship between context and cognition, not much is known about the influence of temporal context on memory formation and retention. In this study, given that our sample comes from a largely Roman Catholic population, we used religious practices that occur throughout the calendar year to operationalize temporal context into two religious seasons (Lent and Ordinary Time). In addition, we used religious art to assess experience and memory as a function of whether there was temporal congruity or incongruity. This allowed us to explore different levels of memory representation; namely, memory for perceptual details of the art, memory for more inferential understanding of the art, and autobiographical memory for the initial experience of the art. Participants viewed 22 representational and abstract artworks during either Lent or Ordinary Time. After viewing, memory was tested at immediate, 1-day, and 7-day delays. We expected that the congruent temporal context (i.e., Lent) would lead to more activated semantic knowledge, which would then aid memory encoding and retention. This was the case only for perceptual details of the art. In addition, during Lent, forgetting followed a more linear pattern. These results suggest that priming semantic knowledge through temporal context leads encoding to focus on low-level information, as opposed to the processing of more complex information. Overall, these findings suggest that temporal context can influence cognition, but to a limited extent.

High-Dose TL Dosimetry of Reactor Neutrons.

Radiation dose was measured with set of TL dosimeters during checkout of neutron radiation hardness of the ORTEC preamplifier type 142A in the experiment at the MARIA nuclear reactor at the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), Otwock-Swierk, Poland. Different types of LiF-based TL detectors have been used for measurements in order to evaluate neutron and non-neutron components of the radiation field in the reactor channel during exposure and to check their relevancy for dose measurements in the reactor environment. For high-dose evaluation a new Ultra-High-Temperature Ratio (UHTR) method established for highly sensitive LiF:Mg,Cu,P detectors has been applied. Neutron fluence evaluated from TL measurements was in good agreement with one calculated using neutron flux data during the experiment.