This essay focuses on Chinese descent by other Canadians. This is to continue to participate in Chinese cultural activities because of the large local Chinese

Chinese descent by other Canadians

What did we find? . Perhaps this is due to their being recognized as being of Chinese descent by other Canadians, or by them being able to continue to participate in Chinese cultural activities because of the large local Chinese community in Vancouver. Identification with Canadian culture, however, yield a different effect, which is summarize in Figure 5.4.

The graph is broke into three panels to distinguish the different age groups at time of immigration. They did not seem to acquire any more Canadian culture over time. And, curiously, the right panel shows that those who arrived in Canada after the age of 31 came to 9 C: :8 f 8 Ill :::s :E 3 ‘E 0 Q) C: 7 :E .!!l ‘ti ‘ti Q) Ill t: C: 6 0 Ill c. O Q) .i:: ……. :t: ‘i 5 Q) 4 – Hong Kong’s Immigrants’ Identification with Canadian Culture Age of Immigration to Canada Age 0-15 Age 16-30 Age 31-50 9 9 a – 8 — / 7 6 – 7 — — 5 :� 4 4 —— 0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20 Years Spent in Canada FIGURE 5.4 Hong Kong immigrants’ identification with Canadian culture.

. These findings are consistent

with the existence of a sensitive window for culture acquisition that begins to close at around age 15, and some other studies have similarly found that when people attempt to learn a second culture later on in life they preserve an echo of the emotional repertoire of their host culture (also see McCauley & Henrich, 2006; Minoura, 1992; Tsai, Ying, & Lee, 2000).

Other research has identified that the process of cultural acquisition does seem to unfold differently within ethnic enclaves such as that found in various cities’ Chinatowns compared with more integrated neighborhoods (Schwartz, Unger, Zamboanga, & Szapocznik, 2010).

Indeed, when we also attempted to document the same pattern with other immigrant groups. This is throughout the United States where such ethnic enclaves were not as prevalent. The  we did not find such a specific cutoff of declining cultural acquisition at age 15, although we still found that the younger a person was at the time of immigration.

This is  the more likely he or she was to identify with American culture (Chudek, Cheung, & Heine, in press).  This is Although more research is necessary to draw firm conclusions.  This developmental sequence of culture learning appears quite similar. It is  in timing to people’s ability to acquire a second language (Johnson & Newport, 1989). Whether this same pattern would emerge for ot