When Microsoft bought task management app. Wunerlist and mobile calendar Sunrise in 2015, it picked up two newcomers that were attracting considerable buzz in Silicon Valley. Microsoft' own Office dominates the market for "productivity" software, but the start-ups represented a new wave of technology designed from the ground up for the smartphone world.

　　Both apps, however, were later scrapped, after Microsoft said it had used their best features in its own products. Their teams of engineers stayed on, making them two of the many "acqui-hires" that the biggest companies have used to feed their insatiable hunger for tech talent.

　　To Microsoft's critics, the fates of Wunderlist and Sunrise are examples of a remorseless drive by Big Tech to chew up any innovative companies that lie in their path. "They bought the seedlings and closed them down," complained Paul Amold, a partner at San Francisco-based Switch Ventures, putting paid to businesses that might one day tum into competitors. Microsoft declined to comment.

　　Like other start-up investors, Mr Amold's own business often depends on selling start-ups to larger tech companies, though he admits to mixed feelings about the result: "I think these things are good for me, if I put my selfish hat on. But are they good for the American economy? I don't know."

　　The US Federal Trade Commission says it wants to find the answer to that question. This week, it asked the five most valuable US tech companies for information about their many small acquisitions over the past decade. Although only a research project at this stage, the request has raised the prospect of regulators wading into early-stage tech markets that until now have been beyond their reach.

　　Given their combined market value of more than$5.5tm, rifling through such small deals-many of them much less prominent than Wunderlist and Sunrise-might seem beside the point. Between them, the five companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook) have spent an average of only $3.4 billion a year on sub-$1 billion acquisitions over the past five years-a drop in the ocean compared with their massive financial reserves, and the more than $130 billion of venture capital that was invested in the US last year.

　　However, critics say the big companies use such deals to buy their most threatening potential competitors before their businesses have a chance to gain momentum, in some cases as part of a “buy and kill” tactic to simply close them down.

　　31.What is true about Wunderlist and Sunrise after their acquisitions?

　　A.Their engineers were retained.

　　B.Their market values declined.

　　C.Their tech features improved.

　　D.Their products were re-priced.

　　32.Microsoft's critics believe that the big tech companies tend to_____.

　　A.exaggerate their product quality

　　B.eliminate their potential competitors

　　C.treat new tech talent unfairly

　　D.ignore public opinions

　　33.Paul Arnold is concerned that small acquisitions might_____.

　　A.weaken big tech companies

　　B.worsen market competition

　　C.harm the national economy

　　D.discourage start-up investors

　　34.The US Federal Trade Commission intend to____.

　　A.examine small acquisitions

　　B.limit Big Tech's expansion

　　C.supervise start-ups operations

　　D.encourage research collaboration

　　35.For the five biggest tech companies, their small acquisition have____.

　　A.brought little financial pressure

　　B.raised few management challenges

　　C.set an example for future deals

　　D.generate considerable profits

　　We're fairly good at judging people based on first impression, thin slices of experience ranging from a glimpse of a photo to five-minute interaction, and deliberation can be not only extraneous but intrusive. In one study of the ability she dubbed "thin slicing," the late psychologist Nalini Ambady asked participants to watch silent 10-second video clips of professors and to rate the instructor's overall effectiveness. Their ratings correlated strongly with students' end-of-semester ratings. Another set of participants had count backward from 1, 000 by nines as they watched the clips, occupying their conscious working memory. Their ratings were just as accurate, demonstrating the intuitive nature of the social processing.

　　Critically, another group was asked to spend a minute writing down reasons for their judgment, before giving the rating. Accuracy dropped dramatically. Ambady suspected that deliberation focused them on vivid but misleading cues, such as certain gestures or utterances, rather than letting the complex interplay of subtle

　　signals form a holistic impression. She found similar interference when participants watched 15-second clips of pairs of people and judged whether they were strangers, friends, or dating partners. Other research shows we're better at detecting deception an sexual orientation from thin slices when we rely on intuition instead of reflection. "It's as if you're driving a stick shift," says Judith Hall, a psychologist at Northeastern University. "and if you start thinking about it too much, you can't remember what you're doing. But if you go on automatic pilot, you're fine. Much of our social life is like that."

　　Thinking too much can also harm our ability to form preferences. College students' ratings of strawberry jams and college course aligned better with experts' opinions when the students weren't asked to analyze their rationale. And people made car-buying decisions that were both objectively better and more personally satisfying when asked to focus on their feelings rather than on details, but only if the decision was complex-when they had a lot of information to process.

　　Intuition's special powers are unleashed only in certain circumstances. In one study participants completed a battery of eight tasks, including four that tapped reflective thinking (discerning rule comprehending vocabulary) and four that tapped intuition an creativity (generating new products or figures of speech). Then the rated the degree to which they had used intuition ("gut feelings," "hunches," "my heart").Use of their gut hurt their performance on the first four tasks, as expected, and helped them on the rest. Sometimes the heart is smarter than the head.

　　36.Nalini Ambaby's study deals with_____

　　A.instructor student interaction

　　B.the power of people' s memory

　　C.the reliability of first impressions

　　D.People's ability to influence others

　　37.In Ambaby's study, rating accuracy dropped when participants_____

　　A.gave the rating in limited time

　　B.focused on specific details

　　C.watched shorter video clips

　　D.discussed with on another

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