The Way You Hear It, the Way You Judge It: Moral Decision-making and Moral Reasoning in Accented Speech

The previous studies have shown that people make different decisions not only after reading and also listening to moral dilemmas in a foreign language (L2) than in a native language (L1). This effect is named Moral Foreign Language Effect (MFLE). Emotion, which is considered to play a pivotal role in moral judgments, is also found to have a close interaction with sounds. The current research aims to (1) investigate whether the sound of different languages (i.e. accents) can also trigger the MFLE in listeners’ moral decision-making and (2) examine the foreign accent effect on listeners’ moral reasoning pattern. Chinese ESL college students were recruited as listeners of Chinese-accented and English-accented speech of moral dilemmas in Mandarin and English. However, although the study revealed a potential foreign accent effect on moral reasoning patterns in native-accented Chinese and foreign-accented Chinese, contradicting our predictions, a foreign accent effect on moral decisions and moral reasoning patterns was not detected. Neither the higher proficiency in L2 was found associated with moral reasoning patterns employed in L2-sounding speech. With potential explanations of the results, and future improvements and research directions in moral psychology are also discussed

Age-of-Information Dependent Random Access for Massive IoT Networks

As the most well-known application of the Internet of Things (IoT), remote monitoring is now pervasive. In these monitoring applications, information usually has a higher value when it is fresher. A new metric, termed the age of information (AoI), has recently been proposed to quantify the information freshness in various IoT applications. This paper concentrates on the design and analysis of age-oriented random access for massive IoT networks. Specifically, we devise a new stationary threshold-based age-dependent random access (ADRA) protocol, in which each IoT device accesses the channel with a certain probability only when its instantaneous AoI exceeds a predetermined threshold. We manage to evaluate the average AoI of the proposed ADRA protocol mathematically by decoupling the tangled AoI evolution of multiple IoT devices and modeling the decoupled AoI evolution of each device as a Discrete-Time Markov Chain. Simulation results validate our theoretical analysis and affirm the superior age performance of the proposed ADRA protocol over the state-of-the-art age-oriented random access schemes.Comment: Accepted to appear at INFOCOM 2020 Workshop on Age of Informatio

An Application of the Localization Strategy of MNCs in China: The case of Starbucks

With the rise of the Chinese market, more MNCs begin to take China as the main market. In order to take up more market share in China, choosing a feasible business strategy is vital for MNCs. Localization strategy is now considered as one of the most suitable strategies in China. However, the motivations and impacts of localization strategy and its enlightenments for western catering multinationals in China are rarely researched. Therefore, I set Starbucks as a case study to do an in-depth analysis of localization strategy in China on the basis of overseas direct investment theory and strategic management theory. The finding shows that Starbucks take localization as the main strategy is because of both internal (company) and external (host country) factors. Correspondingly, the impacts of localization reflect in Starbucks performance and China’s transformation. Still, there is the limitation in this research. For instance, Starbucks has its own distinctive characteristics which are difficult to imitate. Thus, setting Starbucks as a single case study is not comprehensive and the research findings cannot be applied to all catering multinationals. Also, it is hard to say that localization strategy is suitable for all MNCs in China