Indigenous Women’s Ways of Knowing and Healing in Mexico

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on examples of Indigenous ways of knowing in three communities of northern and southern Mexico. It centers on dialogue conducted with Indigenous women from Northern Baja California (Arcelia, the cultural healer from the Kumiai community of San Jose de la Zorra), Oaxaca (Maria Sabina through textual analysis of the only book that houses her healing wisdom), and Chiapas (the Lacandon community of Lacanja Chansayab). It then highlights ways in which the author—an academic woman—brought the wisdom of Indigenous cultures to the center of academic discourse, and how Indigenous women apply their knowledge and wisdom to heal their communities. Lastly, the article concludes with lessons learned from the dialogues with Indigenous women, how they have applied innovative research and healing strategies that depart from Euro-American paradigms, and how they creatively contribute to the development of Indigenous psychologies that are anchored in feminist, popular power.     

Comprehension of direct and indirect sarcastic remarks in children and adolescents with Tourette’s syndrome

Previous research has reported that aspects of social cognition such as nonliteral language comprehension are impaired in adults with Tourette’s syndrome (TS), but little is known about social cognition in children and adolescents with TS. The present study aims to evaluate a measure of sarcasm comprehension suitable for use with children and adolescents (Experiment 1), and to examine sarcasm comprehension in children and adolescents with TS-alone or TS and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, the measure of sarcasm comprehension was found to be sensitive to differences in nonliteral language comprehension for typically-developing children aged 10 to 11 years old compared to children aged 8 to 9 years old; the older group performed significantly better on the comprehension of scenarios ending with either direct or indirect sarcastic remarks, whereas the two age groups did not differ on the comprehension of scenarios ending with sincere remarks. In Experiment 2, both the TS-alone and TS+ADHD groups performed below the level of the control participants on the comprehension of indirect sarcasm items but not on the comprehension of direct sarcasm items and sincere items. Those with TS+ADHD also performed below the level of the control participants on measures of interference control and fluency. The findings are discussed with reference to the possible contribution of executive functioning and mentalizing to the patterns of performance.     

Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s Trinitarian Formulation in the Islamic Milieu

This article examines a theological treatise of Abū al-Faraj ?Abd Allāh Ibn al-?ayyib, a savant of the Assyrian Church of the East. The treatise discusses the Attributes of Deity demonstrating a thematic correspondence with the dominant polemical arguments occasioned by the Christian view of the Trinity and Christology. These include the relation of the hypostases to the attributes of essence, specifically the unity of the divine essence in contrast to the plurality of the hypostases. Ibn al-?ayyib also borrows concepts from the Muslim milieu to commend his Christian formulation. Most notable among these is the Ash?arī concept of the divine attributes (?ifāt) and their categorization. The Ash?arīs had limited the attributes of essence to seven. Ibn al-?ayyib limits them to three: paternity, filiation and procession. The article considers Ibn al-?ayyib’s Christian intellectual forebears, demonstrating that he used and amended their formulations. Finally, two Muslim polemicists are considered to establish that Ibn al-?ayyib was engaging with specific objections concerning the Christian Trinity. This thematic correspondence warrants a reconsideration of Ibn al-?ayyib’s contribution to the Muslim–Christian interface. Although never an explicitly polemic theologian, the savant-priest developed an implicit apologetic through his theological treatises that provided intellectual fortification for his Christian community.     

The Third Treatise of Shaykh Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Ṭayyib on Unity and Trinity

The article consists of a critical Arabic edition and English translation of the Third Treatise of Shaykh Abū al-Faraj ?Abd Allāh Ibn al-?ayyib. The introduction provides a brief, general orientation to the treatise, discussing its relation to two other treatises by the same author and suggesting a chronology. The translation accompanies an article analysing the treatise titled: ‘Ibn al-?ayyib’'s Trinitarian Formulation in the Islamic Milieu’ (Kuhn, M. 2018. “Ibn al-?ayyib’s Trinitarian Formulation in the Islamic Milieu.” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 29 (2): 123–143).     

Using virtual environments to assess visual perception judgements in patients with Parkinson’s disease

Visual perception is an exceedingly critical concern in the daily lives of older people, particularly for determining traffic behaviors. In this study, two simulation experiments were conducted to determine the difference in visual perception judgement ability between healthy older individuals and patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) in simulated environments. The first experiment conducted in this study manipulated the sizes of different depth cues, reference objects, and vehicle size, and also requested participants to determine the distances between objects in different images to determine differences in depth perception between different groups. The second experiment simulates the participant in predicting the time to reach the front target in the driving state. In the experiment, different distances and different speeds are used to understand whether the participants of different groups will have differences in the time prediction. The results of the first experiment demonstrated that patients with PD exhibited significant depth perception degeneration in judging object distances. The second experiment revealed that when vehicles were traveling at high speeds, participants considerably underestimated vehicle speed. The results of this study demonstrate that patients with PD experience a degree of degeneration in terms of depth perception and perception of dynamic distance prediction. This result can assist patients with PD in understanding their visual perception degeneration and improving traffic awareness.     

Optimized cuttlefish algorithm for diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease

This paper presents an optimized cuttlefish algorithm for feature selection based on the traditional cuttlefish algorithm, which can be used for diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at its early stage. Parkinson is a central nervous system disorder, caused due to the loss of brain cells. Parkinson's disease is incurable and could eventually lead to death but medications can help to control symptoms and elongate the patient's life to some extent. The proposed model uses the traditional cuttlefish algorithm as a search strategy to ascertain the optimal subset of features. The decision tree and k-nearest neighbor classifier as a judgment on the selected features. The Parkinson speech with multiple types of sound recordings and Parkinson Handwriting sample’s datasets are used to evaluate the proposed model. The proposed algorithm can be used in predicting the Parkinson’s disease with an accuracy of approximately 94% and help individual to have proper treatment at early stage. The experimental result reveals that the proposed bio-inspired algorithm finds an optimal subset of features, maximizing the accuracy, minimizing number of features selected and is more stable.     

Reflecting on a journey of resilience in children’s blood and cancer nursing

Reflective practice is recognised as an integral part of being a highly skilled and successful health care professional. Many benefits have been identified from being a reflective practitioner including the opportunity for critical thinking, growing self-awareness and supporting individual resilience. There is a growing body of literature recognising the negative emotional impact that caring for children with cancer and blood disorders can have on health professionals. Currently there is an emerging interest in a more strengths-based approach focused on maintaining staff wellbeing. Resilience has been suggested as a framework for coping and maintaining wellbeing in areas, like children’s oncology and has been used as a term to describe the ‘surviving’ health professional. This paper explores the first author’s (GA) experiences of being a children’s oncology nurse and paediatric palliative care nurse specialist in the context of existing empirical and theoretical literature, with a particular focus on how GA developed resilience. Reflective examples of practice are used within the context of themes identified from a recent literature review exploring how resilience is defined within empirical literature.