DESPERATELY SEEKING SAMMI: RE-INVENTING WOMEN'S DANCE IN PUNJAB

Based on original fieldwork among professional performing artists, interviews with culture promoters, and observation of unfolding events, this article details the history of a dance form little known outside Punjab. The dance samm? is, in fact, little known within India?s Punjab state as well, despite recent efforts to revive it through staged presentations. In the late 20th twentieth century, culture promoters in Punjab began to recognize dances that had previously been marginalized – by the over-commodified bhangra – in an effort to regain a sense of the region?s diverse yet fading artistic heritage. Sammi, a dance of the Western Punjab, was among those that were promoted. Yet unlike the case for some other dances, information on sammi, mostly possessed in India by displaced tribal people – and especially the cloistered women of those communities – was not readily available. After surveying the historical sammi dance, the article presents the recent history of modern stagings of the dance, wherein it now functions to provide equal performance opportunities in folkloric dance for Punjab?s growing number of educated young women. However, in order for this to be, a sammi dance has had to be essentially reinvented from scanty memories and imagination. Since the initial blow dealt by the Partition, local cultural dynamics of gender and ethnicity have created a scenario as to where and what has become presented under the name of ?sammi? may bear little resemblance to the heritage form it purports to revive.     

JOB SEEKING SKILL GROUPS

Deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients to community living arrangements has increased the demand for psychiatric rehabilitation services. Although job seeking skill groups have reported success with varied rehabilitation populations, to date little research has attempted to adapt these methods to a group of chronic psychiatric patients. Forty-four patient entered a ten week job seeking skills group designed to increase their effectiveness in job interviews. At follow-up, over one-third were productively employed and over half of the subjects reported satisfaction with their community adjustment. The results suggest that although employment is a viable goal, it is not the only factor which determines successful community adjustment.     

Discourse and Cognition. Edwards,D. (1997). Sage,London: pp. 368. £49.50 ISBN 0‐8039‐7696‐8 (hardback), £15.99 ISBN 0‐8039‐7697‐6 (paperback)

Wendy Drewery is a philosopher by training and teaches health development and counselling at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The attentional ‘zoom‐lens’ in 8‐month‐old infants

The spatial attention mechanisms of orienting and zooming cooperate to properly select visual information from the environment and plan eye movements accordingly. Despite the fact that orienting ability has been extensively studied in infancy, the zooming mechanism – namely, the ability to distribute the attentional resources to a small or large portion of the visual field – has never been tested before. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the attentional zooming abilities of 8‐month‐old infants. An eye‐tracker device was employed to measure the saccadic latencies (SLs) at the onset of a visual target displayed at two eccentricities. The size of the more eccentric target was adjusted in order to counteract the effect of cortical magnification. Before the target display, attentional resources were automatically focused (zoom‐in) or spread out (zoom‐out) by using a small or large cue, respectively. Two different cue–target intervals were also employed to measure the time course of this attentional mechanism. The results showed that infants' SLs varied as a function of the cue size. Moreover, a clear time course emerged, demonstrating that infants can rapidly adjust the attentional focus size during a pre‐saccadic temporal window. These findings could serve as an early marker for neurodevelopmental disorders associated with attentional zooming dysfunction such as autism and dyslexia.