Immigrant Youth and Employment: Lessons Learned from the Analysis of LSIC and 82 Lived Stories

Finding a job has become a critical challenge to many youth. Immigrant youth, who have been a key part of the global migrants, are particularly vulnerable when entering the job market of the host country due to various structural barriers. However, in both public policy discourse and research, their labour market experience tends to be overlooked. In this paper, we report the employment experience of recently arrived immigrant youth based on an analysis of the LSIC and findings of in-depth interviews of 82 immigrant youth in four cities in Canada. Our results reveal that recently arrived immigrant youth tend to work in lower-skilled employment, experience significant delays in finding employment, have difficulties with foreign credential recognition, and have fewer means to access to job markets.     

Distinct processing for pictures of animals and objects: evidence from eye movements

Many studies have suggested that emotional stimuli orient and engage attention. There is also evidence that animate stimuli, such as those from humans and animals, cause attentional bias. However, categorical and emotional factors are usually mixed, and it is unclear to what extent human context influences attentional allocation. To address this issue, we tracked participants' eye movements while they viewed pictures with animals and inanimate images (i.e., category) as focal objects. These pictures had either negative or neutral emotional valence, and either human body parts or nonhuman parts were near the focal objects (i.e., context). The picture's valence, arousal, position, size, and most of the low-level visual features were matched across categories. The results showed that nonhuman animals were more likely to be attended to and to be attended to for longer times than inanimate objects. The same pattern held for the human contexts (vs. nonhuman contexts). The effects of emotional valence, category, and context interacted. Specifically, in images with a negative valence, focal animals and objects with human context had comparable numbers of gaze fixations and gaze duration. These results highlighted the attentional bias to animate parts of a picture and clarified that the effects of category, valence, and picture context interacted to influence attentional allocation.     

Spatial orienting in the visual field: a unified perceptual space?

Visual attention can be oriented toward a spatial location in the visual field exogenously by an abrupt onset of a peripheral cue. In a series of behavioral studies on exogenous orienting of attention with a double-cue paradigm, we demonstrated a functional subdivision of perceptual space in the visual field. Specifically, inhibition of return (IOR) is much stronger at periphery relative to perifoveal visual field up to approximately 15° eccentricity, suggesting two dissociable functional areas in the visual field. To further investigate the generality of this functional subdivision of the visual field, we measured IOR effects with another single-cue paradigm and applied a very short cue-target interval that was typically anticipated not to observe any inhibitory effect at all. Consistent with this expectation, no IOR effects at the eccentricities up to 15° were observed. However, significant IOR effects beyond 15° eccentricities were consistently demonstrated. These results not only revealed an early onset of IOR for more peripheral stimuli, but also confirmed that the perceptual space in the visual field is not homogeneous but underlies a functional subdivision with a border of ca. 15° eccentricity.     

fMRI correlates of inhibition of return in perifoveal and peripheral visual field

When a target appears in the same peripheral location as a previous cue, responding is typically delayed if the cue-target interval is relatively long. This phenomenon is termed inhibition of return (IOR) and has been suggested to reflect an attentional bias in favour of novel visual space. It has been demonstrated recently that IOR is much stronger in the far periphery than in the perifoveal visual field. The present study further investigated the neural mechanisms underlying this eccentricity effect of IOR with an event-related fMRI technique. The results demonstrated a stronger activation in visual cortex for perifoveal processing and a broader activation in multiple brain areas for peripheral processing. When IOR effects were compared between these two areas, a stronger activation of the fronto-parietal network was evidenced for perifoveal versus peripheral IOR, while the prefrontal cortex was more strongly involved in the peripheral IOR versus perifoveal IOR. These results suggest that different neural mechanisms are mediating the dissociable inhibitory functions between the perifoveal and peripheral visual field.     

Effects of speed of word processing on semantic access: the case of bilingualism

Bilingual speakers generally manifest slower word recognition than monolinguals. We investigated the consequences of the word processing speed on semantic access in bilinguals. The paradigm involved a stream of English words and pseudowords presented in succession at a constant rate. English-Welsh bilinguals and English monolinguals were asked to count the number of letters in pseudowords and actively disregard words. They were not explicitly told that pairs of words in immediate succession were embedded and could either be semantically related or not. We expected that slower word processing in bilinguals would result in semantic access indexed by semantic priming. As expected, bilinguals showed significant semantic priming, indexed by an N400 modulation, whilst monolinguals did not. Moreover, bilinguals were slower in performing the task. The results suggest that bilinguals cannot discriminate between pseudowords and words without accessing semantic information whereas monolinguals can dismiss English words on the basis of subsemantic information.     

Lexical and sublexical semantic preview benefits in Chinese reading

Semantic processing from parafoveal words is an elusive phenomenon in alphabetic languages, but it has been demonstrated only for a restricted set of noncompound Chinese characters. Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, this experiment examined whether parafoveal lexical and sublexical semantic information was extracted from compound preview characters. Results generalized parafoveal semantic processing to this representative set of Chinese characters and extended the parafoveal processing to radical (sublexical) level semantic information extraction. Implications for notions of parafoveal information extraction during Chinese reading are discussed.     

Promoting exercise behavior among Chinese youth with hearing loss: a randomized controlled trial based on the transtheoretical model

The transtheoretical model proposes that behavior change is experienced as a series of stages. Interventions tailored to these stages are most likely to be effective in progressing people through the model's hypothesized behavior change continuum. In this study, a stage-tailored, 12-week, exercise behavior intervention based on the transtheoretical model was conducted among a sample of 150 Chinese youth with hearing loss. Participants were randomized into an intervention or control group with all the core transtheoretical model constructs assessed pre- and post-intervention. Participants in the intervention group showed greater advances in their stage of exercise behavior change, decisional balance, and processes of change use compared to those in the control group. The intervention, however, was insufficient for increasing participants' self-efficacy for exercise behavior. The findings partially support the utility of the theory-based intervention for improving the exercise behavior of Chinese youth with hearing loss, while simultaneously helping to identify areas in need of improvement for future applications.     

Return Migrant or Diaspora: An Exploratory Study of New-Generation Chinese–Canadian Youth Working in Hong Kong

The circular movement of migrants between their homelands and adopted countries has problematized the previous linear understanding of return migration. However, the concept of circular migration tends to apply to migrants whose movement is enabled by their extensive pre-migration connections with their homelands. In this paper, we report findings of a study on a group of new-generation Chinese–Canadian youth working in Hong Kong. Although, like many return migrants, this group of young people had economic reasons for moving to Hong Kong (their parents' homeland), they do not position themselves as return migrants. Instead, they have kept a strong Canadian identity by maintaining unique friendship circles and perceiving Canada as a home to which they will one day return. We highlight in this paper some implications of their experiences for transnational migration studies.     

累积生态风险与高职生学习倦怠：消极自我图式和网络成瘾的中介作用

采用累积生态风险问卷、消极自我图式问卷、网络成瘾问卷以及学习倦怠问卷对湖南省4所高职院校的664名高职生进行调查,考察累积生态风险与高职生学习倦怠的关系以及消极自我图式、网络成瘾的中介作用。结果发现:(1)高职生累积生态风险、消极自我图式、网络成瘾和学习倦怠均呈显著正相关;(2)高职生累积生态风险对学习倦怠的直接效应和间接效应均显著。间接效应包括了三条路径:通过消极自我图式的中介作用、通过网络成瘾的中介作用以及通过消极自我图式和网络成瘾的链式中介作用。这一结论有助于理解累积生态风险对学习倦怠的作用机制,为降低高职生的学习倦怠提供参考建议。     

Effects of self–other decision-making on time-based intertemporal choice

The effects of self–other decision-making on intertemporal choice have been revealed in many studies using a monetary outcome. However, the outcome of intertemporal choice is not restricted to money; time is also a scarce and nonrenewable resource outcome. Thus, we conducted a series of experiments to address the effects of self–other decision-making on time-based intertemporal choice, a type of intertemporal choice that uses time as an outcome. Over the course of three experiments, differences in self–other decision-making were evidenced. Participants who made decisions for others were more likely to prefer the smaller but sooner (SS) option over the larger but later (LL) option and considered the gain of the SS option to be significantly greater than that of the LL option. Participants who made decisions for themselves were likely to prefer the LL option over the SS option. However, they considered the gains of the LL and the SS option to be indifferent. Changing the role of decision-making could affect the ability of individuals to consider the future consequences of their decisions. The effects of self–other decision-making on time-based intertemporal choice could be explained by the accounts of economic reasoning and construal level theory. The findings indicated that the effects of self–other decision-making on time-based intertemporal choice, which could be generated simply by rewording questions, can help individuals make optimal long-term choices without the need for increased control.