Mediating Andean Modernity: The Literary Oracular in Muerte por el tacto by Jaime Saenz

Upon his return from Berlin in 1939, Jaime Saenz started working in La Paz for intelligence agencies and public relations offices of Bolivia and the United States, which led to correspondent positions with Reuters and McGraw-Hill World News. His trajectory into Cold War Bolivian state nobility seemed all but guaranteed. However, on the brink of this breakout moment, he renounced his job —and professionalism altogether— committing himself to a life of literature and alcoholism as his marriage unraveled. In response to repeated interventions, he justified his every loss with a further indictment of the precautious, which was an outgrowth of his belief in the existence of a higher truth that was both accessible and impervious to analytical reason. In this article, I ask how Saenz’s poetry from the 1950s metabolized the rhetoric of indictment which it had inherited from the Tellurism of the Chaco generation. How might Muerte por el tacto (1957) be symptomatic of a broader aim of restoring to modern poetry its oracular legitimacy? On what grounds did Saenz indict precautious defenders of historical culture? And how did such an indictment mediate “national energy” (Tamayo) as it came into language through the nativist discourse of the land? Paying focal attention to regimes of revelation in Saenz’s early poetry and the historical conditions of its production, this article updates a discussion among Transatlanticists about the legitimization of irrationalism in 20th-century poetics and politics by assessing the socio-symbolic value of the oracular in the regionalist discourse of modernism.

Perceived Impact of Quarantine on Loneliness, Death Obsession, and Preoccupation With God: Predictors of Increased Fear of COVID-19

Most countries are facing the societal challenging need for a new quarantine period due to the increasing number of COVID-19 infections, indicating a second or even third wave of disease. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the surface existential issues that are typically less present in people's focal attention. The first aim of this study was to identify some of these existential struggles such as increased feelings of loneliness, death obsession, and preoccupation with God. Secondly, we explored the association of these factors with the increased fear of coronavirus during the quarantine. Data was collected from 1,340 Romanian adults using a cross-sectional web-based survey design in the midst of the national lockdown period of COVID-19. Participants completed measures of COVID-19 related loneliness, death obsession, and preoccupation with God twice; first, thinking about the period before the pandemic, and second, for the current situation during the quarantine. Then, they completed a fear of COVID-19 measure. Participants perceived an increase in the feelings of loneliness, death obsession, and preoccupation with God during the confinement. Furthermore, gender, knowing someone diagnosed with COVID-19, loneliness, death obsession, and preoccupation with God predicted fear of COVID-19. Interestingly, days in isolation did not predict fear of COVID-19 nor were associated with feelings of loneliness. In line with existential positive psychology, these results highlight the importance of policies and interventions targeting the experience of loneliness, spiritual beliefs, and particularly those aimed to promote death acceptance, in order to alleviate intense fear of COVID-19.

The Focal Attention Window Size Explains Letter Substitution Errors in Reading

Acquired Neglect Dyslexia is often associated with right-hemisphere brain damage and is mainly characterized by omissions and substitutions in reading single words. Martelli et al. proposed in 2011 that these two types of error are due to different mechanisms. Omissions should depend on neglect plus an oculomotor deficit, whilst substitutions on the difficulty with which the letters are perceptually segregated from each other (i.e., crowding phenomenon). In this study, we hypothesized that a deficit of focal attention could determine a pathological crowding effect, leading to imprecise letter identification and consequently substitution errors. In Experiment 1, three brain-damaged patients, suffering from peripheral dyslexia, mainly characterized by substitutions, underwent an assessment of error distribution in reading pseudowords and a T detection task as a function of cue size and timing, in order to measure focal attention. Each patient, when compared to a control group, showed a deficit in adjusting the attentional focus. In Experiment 2, a group of 17 right-brain-damaged patients were asked to perform the focal attention task and to read single words and pseudowords as a function of inter-letter spacing. The results allowed us to confirm a more general association between substitution-type reading errors and the performance in the focal attention task.

Theory of Mind Development in Preschoolers with Hearing Impairment

The article is devoted to the study of the development of a mental model in preschoolers with hearing impairment after cochlear implantation. The analysis of the specifics of the manifestations of the mental model deficiency, which is associated with the peculiarities of using the means of special attention in preschoolers with hearing impairment, is carried out. The ability of a child's focal attention to attention as a critical additional, necessary for the development of a mental model. Sample consisted of 40 preschool children aged 5-7 years (Mage=5,9 years, SDage=0,6 months), 20 with sensorineural hearing loss with cochlear implants (years (Mage=5,6 years, SDage=0,6 months, age by moment of implantation Mage=3,2 years, SDage=0,6) and 20 typically developing preschoolers of 5–7 years old (Mage=5,1 years, SDage=0,5 months). Standardized methods for assessing the mental model were used: test for erroneous opinion (Sally–Anne's task), the task “What does Charlie want?”, the task of understanding intentions based on external signs, the task of understanding the principle “to see means” (A.S. Gerasimova, E.A. Sergienko) To fix the eye movement of preschoolers during the behavior of a child with an adult in play conditions, the eye-tracking method was used. It is recorded that preschoolers with hearing impairments are selectively unable to detect and interpret the intentions of another person, and they also have a lack of means of coordinated attention.

Impact of Global Financial Crisis on Indian Handicrafts Exports: A Breakpoint Analysis

After the global economic downturn in 2007–2008, India’s export of principal commodities such as ores and minerals, engineering goods, projects goods and handicrafts products showed insignificant growth rate. The handicrafts sector has been given focal attention in the study due to its worrying insignificant growth and to exploit opportunities for exporters in the global market. This article, in an attempt to examine structural changes in exports of handicrafts product, performed the Chow breakpoint test by setting a break-up year to see if there has been a break in demand. This study contemplates and reflects how Indian handicrafts sector has surpassed its reputation among the diverse consumers in the global market after the global economic crisis and how government interventions have liberated the sector from middling growth to become a major contributor to world consumption. To make the subject more content and lucid to understand, this study has thoroughly accrued, reviewed and analysed several reports and trade data, and it culminates with some policy implication and suggestions to policymakers and entrepreneurs.

Terror Management Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Terror management theory is focused on the role that awareness of death plays in diverse aspects of life. Here, we discuss the theory’s implications for understanding the widely varying ways in which people have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that regardless of whether one consciously believes that the virus is a major threat to life or only a minor inconvenience, fear of death plays an important role in driving one’s attitudes and behavior related to the virus. We focus on the terror management theory distinction between proximal defenses, which are activated when thoughts of death are in current focal attention and are logically related to the threat at hand, and distal defenses, which are activated when thoughts of death are on the fringes of one’s consciousness and entail the pursuit of meaning, personal value, and close relationships. We use this framework to discuss the many ways in which COVID-19 undermines psychological equanimity, the diverse ways people have responded to this threat, and the role of ineffective terror management in psychological distress and disorder that may emerge in response to the virus.

A Uniquely Punitive Turn? Sex Offenders and the Persistence of Punitive Sanctioning

Objectives: This article tests two theoretical ideas: (1) that social concerns about particular “dangerous classes” of offenders shift over time to influence court sanctioning practices and (2) that, since the 1990s, sex offenders in particular came to be viewed by courts as one such “dangerous class.” Methods: We examine sanctioning trends in Florida and compare punishment of sex offenders in earlier versus later parts of the get-tough era. We then examine whether sentencing is associated with rational criminal justice incentives (e.g., increasing seriousness or rates of sex crimes) or with shifting public concerns (e.g., increasing media attention to sexual violence). Results: Punitiveness increased for all crimes but especially for sex crimes. Punitiveness appears not to be driven by increasing seriousness or rates of crime, but does appear to be partially driven by increasing national media attention to sexual violence. Conclusions: The findings support arguments that sex offenders were subjected to a uniquely punitive turn in sanctioning and that courts are sensitive to shifting public concerns. The results advance theoretical arguments developed by Gottschalk and earlier work that suggests that the persistence of get-tough era sentencing practices may be driven in part through focal attention to select types of offenders.