Tomeito or Tomahto: Exploring consumer's accent and their engagement with artificially intelligent interactive voice assistants

Artificially intelligent interactive voice assistants (AIIVAs) are developed to understand language, but there is limited insight into their ability to understand accents. While there have been substantial advancements in understanding multiple languages by AIIVAs, having an understanding of variety of accents is an emerging concern. To address these concerns, we contextualised our study in India, one of the world's most populated and diverse countries with varying accents and dialects. Study 1 collected qualitative data through semi structured interviews with participants, data was subsequently thematically analysed, and a typology was developed with respect to the context of use and consumers' emotional and rational reactions towards AIIVAs when interacting with accents. For Study 2, we implemented the quantitative research method. This was done to reiterate the conceptual model formulated from the qualitative research findings. Findings suggest that positive emotional action has emerged as the most significant factor, followed by rational action and negative emotional action. This study contributes significantly to the theoretical understanding of future consumer behaviour and human-computer interaction trends. It provides practical implications for managers, tech developers, and other companies working and using speech-to-text automatic speech recognition to know that while they train their algorithms with languages, they should be mindful of the diverse accents of their consumers.     

A functional naturalism

Synthese - I provide two arguments against value-free naturalism. Both are based on considerations concerning biological teleology. Value-free naturalism is the thesis that both (1) everything is,...     

The role of stress mindset in support provision

To better understand the antecedents of support provision within relationships, this study examined the potential role of a novel individual difference; spouses' stress mindset (i.e., beliefs about whether stress‐is‐enhancing or stress‐is‐debilitating). As individuals with a stress‐is‐enhancing mindset often underestimate other's stress, we hypothesized that those with a stress‐is‐enhancing mindset will generally provide less and worse support compared to individuals with a stress‐is‐debilitating mindset. The results revealed few significant associations and the associations that were significant were contrary to predictions. For example, wives with a stress‐is‐enhancing mindset provided more support, and husbands who perceived their partner as having a more stress‐is‐enhancing mindset provided better support. Further research is needed to replicate these results and determine whether stress mindset has interpersonal consequences.     

More Property,Better Sex? The Relationship Between Property Ownership and Sexual Satisfaction Among Married Vietnamese Women

Since the first sexuality research in Vietnam was conducted in the late 1980s, scholarship on this field has proliferated and the topic is now less of a taboo in public discourse. Nevertheless, little is known about the area of sexual satisfaction as well as factors determining a satisfying sexual life for Vietnamese women. Using data from 2783 married women collected from a national survey, we explore the relationships among their sexual satisfaction, socio-demographic factors, and sexual experiences with a focus on their association with ownership of property. Results demonstrated that income, ethnicity, living region, frequency of sex, and sexual experience had a strong relationship with a satisfying sexual life for married women. Additionally, we found that property ownership was a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction: Women who had a savings or bank account in their own name as well as held ownership over their housing or residential land had higher odds of feeling more sexually satisfied. The present study is an important step toward follow-up research that should delve deeper into the field of human subjective sexual well-being not only from the health point of view, but also through a social and cultural lens. The study also has useful implications for those working on sexual health rights as well as for practitioners of women’s rights in development programs and projects that aim to empower women through altering traditional discourses and practices over women’s role in property ownership.     

Academic Integrity in Higher Education: The Case of Plagiarism of Graduation Reports by Undergraduate Seniors in Vietnam

Plagiarism in higher education has become widespread among students in Vietnam. This paper aims to examine the seriousness of the problem by comparing the severity of plagiarism in two universities, one of which uses Turnitin software to check its student reports. For that purpose, 977 samples have been drawn from 1434 required graduation reports written by senior undergraduates in the economics and management field from 2013 to 2015. Turnitin’s “Similarity Index” (SI) was used to check for alleged plagiarism, which was found to be more widespread at the university not using Turnitin. At that university, 91.7% of the graduation reports were defined as plagiarized, while 61.7% of the reports were plagiarized at the university using the software. The main source of this problem was the use of information from the internet without citing the original authors.     

Mosque-Based Emotional Support Among Young Muslim Americans

Despite a growing literature on social support networks in religious settings (i.e., church-based social support), little is known about mosque-based support among Muslims. This study investigates the demographic and religious behavior correlates of mosque-based social support among a multi-racial and ethnic sample of 231 young Muslims from southeast Michigan. Several dimensions of mosque-based support are examined including receiving emotional support, giving emotional support, anticipated emotional support and negative interactions with members of one’s mosque. Results indicated that women both received and anticipated receiving greater support than did men. Higher educational attainment was associated with receiving and giving less support compared to those with the lowest level of educational attainment. Moreover, highly educated members reported fewer negative interactions than less educated members. Mosque attendance and level of congregational involvement positively predicted receiving, giving, and anticipated emotional support from congregants, but was unrelated to negative interactions. Overall, the study results converge with previously established correlates of church-based emotional support.     

Presentation procedures in lineups and mug books: a direct comparison

The purpose of this research was to replicate and to extend past findings that the best procedure for presenting lineup pictures is not the best procedure for presenting mug book pictures. Participants witnessed a videotape of a simulated crime that was followed by a lineup task for half the participants or a mug book task for the other half. The task factor was crossed with two other factors: (a) a presentation procedure factor—pictures presented one‐at‐a‐time or grouped 12 per page and (b) a presence of the perpetrator factor—perpetrator present or absent in the viewed pictures. For perpetrator‐absent conditions, the one‐at‐a time lineup procedure produced more correct rejections than the grouped lineup procedure replicating past results; however, for the mug book task the two presentation procedures did not differ. For perpetrator‐present conditions, the grouped presentation procedure produced more correct identifications than the one‐at‐a time procedure in both lineups and mug books. The different pattern of results for lineups and mug books was explained in terms of differences in response criterion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.