Nan Li

The processing of words in sentence reading is influenced by both information from sentential context and information from previewing upcoming words, but how both effects interact during online reading is not clear. In this study, we tested the interaction of predictability effect and the preview effect in predicting reading processing. In the experiment, sentence constraint was controlled using all high-constraint sentences as materials. We manipulated both the predictability of the target word in the sentence and the semantic relationship between the preview word and the target word as predictors of the semantic preview effect. The results showed that the semantic preview effect was present only when the target word had low-predictability in the sentence but was not observed when the target word had high-predictability in the sentence. The results suggest that contextual information in reading can modulate the pre-activation of words and thus influence whether the preview word has a priming effect. The results of this study provide further evidence that reading comprehension involves an interactive system of processing multiple sources of information at multiple levels.

Under the dual background of underemployment and health inequality, this study empirically analyzes the impact of education level on underemployed workers’ health based on data from the 2016 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey. The results show that underemployment is significantly related to the decline of self-rated health, increased depressive tendencies, and the prevalence of illness over a certain period. The results indicate that underemployment can significantly reduce the health level of workers in both low and high education level groups. However, underemployment appears to have no significant impact on workers’ health in the middle education level group. This result holds even if the measurement method of the indicators is adjusted and endogeneity is considered; this indicates that the research conclusions are robust. Moreover, this kind of health inequality mainly comes from the economic and leisure effects of underemployment for workers with different educational levels. Although underemployment significantly reduces the economic level of workers in each education level group, it brings a positive leisure effect to workers with a middle education level and a negative leisure effect to workers with a low education level. This study provides empirical support for increasing labor protection mechanisms for underemployed people and reducing the health inequality caused by differences in education level.