The Political Justification of Migrant Workers in Alberta,Canada

Considering a series of oil-driven economic booms, the use of inter-provincial and international migrant labour has become an important part of labour market policy in the Canadian province of Alberta. The increased use of temporary foreign workers is controversial. Narrative analysis of legislators’ statements in the legislature and the press between 2000 and 2011 reveals the government using three narratives to justify policies encouraging greater use of foreign migrant workers: (1) labour shortages require migrant workers, (2) migrants do not threaten Canadian jobs and (3) migrants are not being exploited. Close scrutiny of each narrative demonstrates them to be largely invalid. This suggests a significant disconnect between the real and espoused reasons for the significant changes to labour market policy, changes that advantage employers and disadvantage both Canadian and foreign workers. The findings are relevant to understand the political dynamics of economically related migration.     

Differential Decline of Verbal and Visuospatial Processing Speed Across the Adult Life Span

The present study compared the age-related decline in verbal and visuospatial processing speed in 131 participants aged 18 to 90 years. Participants performed four verbal and four visuospatial tasks. Age differences in processing speed were compared at the group and individual levels. For the group-level analyses, participants were divided into a young adult group and six older groups subdivided by decade. The mean verbal and visuospatial response times (RTs) for each group were regressed on the corresponding RTs of the young adult group. The slope of the visuospatial regression was greater than that for the verbal regression at all ages, and the difference between the visuospatial and verbal slopes increased with each decade. For the individual-level analyses, a verbal and a visuospatial processing-time coefficient (Hale & Jansen, 1994) was obtained for each individual, and these values were then regressed on age. Verbal processing time increased linearly by approximately 50% while visuospatial processing time increased exponentially by approximately 500% from 18 to 90 years. Taken together, the results at both the group and the individual level demonstrate that aging affects visuospatial processing to a much greater extent than verbal processing.     

Health Related Quality of Life in Children with Congenital Heart Disease

Health-related quality of life in children with congenital heart disease (CHD) was compared to that of healthy children. Furthermore, agreement between child and parent reports was examined. In addition, differences in quality of life related to the severity of CHD were evaluated. One hundred children with CHD aged between 8-18 years and their parents answered a health-related quality of life-questionnaire during their visit to the paediatric cardiology outpatient department. CHD children reported reduced motor functioning and autonomy compared to healthy children. Parents of children with CHD reported their children to have a reduced quality of life in the domains of: motor functioning, autonomy and cognitive functioning. Agreement between child and parent reports was moderate. Children systematically reported lower health related quality of life on the domain of positive emotions than did parents. Health related quality of life in children with CHD appeared not to be influenced by severity of the disease. In conclusion, regardless of the severity of the disease, children with CHD reported their health related quality of life on several domains to be lower than that of healthy children. This means that on several domains, the emotional impact of problems in health status is greater for children with CHD than for healthy children. When CHD patients visit the clinic, it is important that physicians actively ask patients as well as parents about the child's motor functioning, autonomy and cognitive functioning. Children with problems in these domains can then be identified, and psychological interventions can take place at an early stage.     

Seeing is a verb

This commentary on ‘The interaction of attention and action: From seeing action to acting on perception’ by Humphreys et al. (2010) considers selection‐for‐action in relation to the role of parietal cortex corollary discharge in the ‘mastery of sensori‐motor contingencies’ that O'Regan and Noe (2001) suggest gives rise to visual awareness.     

The level of frontal-temporal beta-2 band EEG synchronization distinguishes anterior cingulate cortex from other frontal regions

Recent findings indicate that complex cognitive functions are organized at a global level in the brain and rely on large-scale information processing requiring functional integration of multiple disparate neural assemblies. The critical question of the integration of distributed brain activities is whether the essential integrative role can be attributed to a specific structure in the brain or whether this ability is inherent to the cognitive network as a whole. The results of the present study show that mean values of the running correlation function in frontal-temporal EEG pairs with one electrode in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are significantly higher than the same values in other frontal-temporal pairs. These findings indicate a particular role of the ACC in large-scale communication, which could reflect its unique integrative functions in cognitive processing.     

Maternal and Paternal Perception of Child Vulnerability and Behaviour Problems in Very Preterm Born Children

Preterm born children have more behaviour problems than term born children. Perinatal risks, current child functioning, sociodemographic characteristics, parental psychological distress and parental perceptions of child vulnerability (PCV) have been shown to be risk factors for behaviour problems. However, the role of maternal and paternal PCV is unclear, as these have not been investigated as a risk factor for behaviour problems, with all other risk factors taken into account. Aim of this study is to investigate whether maternal and paternal PCV are independent risk factors for behaviour problems in very preterm (VP) and term born children. The present study is a single centre prospective cohort study. Preterm children (n = 104), born at <30 weeks' gestation and/or birth weight <1000 g, and term children (n = 95) were assessed at age 5. Results showed that risk factors for parent‐rated behaviour problems were low/middle parental education, VP birth, parental stress and, in VP children, maternal PCV. Risk factors for teacher‐rated behaviour problems were low/middle parental education, foreign parental country of birth, intrauterine growth restriction and objective child vulnerabilities. It can be concluded that maternal PCV is a risk factor for parent‐rated behaviour problems in VP children. When VP children are presented with behavioural problems, clinicians ought to be aware of the possibility that parents might still perceive their child as vulnerable. The neonatal history of the child, the way parents experienced that period, their perceptions of the child and possible consequences of these perceptions could be subjects for conversation during visits at follow‐up clinics. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Volume 18 – List of contents,Author index,and List of reviewers, 2012

Negative acknowledgement is an impression management technique that uses the admission of an unfavourable quality to mitigate a negative response. Although the technique has been clearly demonstrated, the underlying process is not well understood. The current research identifies a key mediator and moderator while also demonstrating that the effect extends beyond the specific acknowledged domain to the overall evaluation of a target object. The results of study 1 indicate that negative acknowledgement works through mitigating negatively valenced cognitive responses. People who are presented with a negative acknowledgement are less likely to counterargue when forming an evaluation. The results of study 2 reveal that individual differences in need for structure impact the effectiveness of the technique. People who are high in need for structure are more susceptible to the effect presumably because of their desire for easy-to-use information that aids the formation and maintenance of simple knowledge structures.     

Big Five personality traits,job satisfaction and subjective wellbeing in China

This paper examines the effect of the Big Five personality traits on job satisfaction and subjective wellbeing (SWB). The paper also examines the mediating role of job satisfaction on the Big Five–SWB relationship. Data were collected from a sample of 818 urban employees from five Chinese cities: Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, Dalian, and Fushun. All the study variables were measured with well‐established multi‐item scales that have been validated both in English‐speaking populations and in China. The study found only extraversion to have an effect on job satisfaction, suggesting that there could be cultural difference in the relationships between the Big Five and job satisfaction in China and in the West. The study found that three factors in the Big Five—extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism—have an effect on SWB. This finding is similar to findings in the West, suggesting convergence in the relationship between the Big Five and SWB in different cultural contexts. The research found that only the relationship between extraversion and SWB is partially mediated by job satisfaction, implying that the effect of the Big Five on SWB is mainly direct, rather than indirect via job satisfaction. The study also found that extraversion was the strongest predictor of both job satisfaction and SWB. This finding implies that extraversion could be more important than other factors in the Big Five in predicting job satisfaction and SWB in a “high collectivism” and “high power distance” country such as China. The research findings are discussed in the Chinese cultural context. The study also offers suggestions on the directions for future research.