Is brain activity observable that leads to an evaluation of a probability of 0.5 that is different from 0.5 in binary lottery choices?

This paper focuses on the problem of probability weighing in the evaluation of lotteries. According to Prospect Theory a probability of 0.5 has a weight of smaller than 0.5. We conduct an EEG experiment in which we compare the results of the evaluation of binary lotteries by certainty equivalents with the results of the bisection method. The bisection method gives the amount of money that corresponds to the midpoint of the utilities of the two payoffs in a binary lottery as it has been shown previously. In this method probabilities are not evaluated. We analyzed EEG data focused on whether a probability is evaluated or not. Our data show differences between the two methods connected with the attention towards sure monetary payoffs, but they do not show brain activity connected with a devaluation of the probability of 0.5.

Different methods to define utility functions yield different results and engage different neural processes

Although the concept of utility is fundamental to many economic theories, up to now a generally accepted method determining a subject’s utility function is not available. We investigated two methods that are used in economic sciences for describing utility functions by using response-locked event-related potentials in order to assess their neural underpinnings. For defining the certainty equivalent (CE), we used a lottery game with probabilities of 0.5, for identifying the subjects’ utility functions directly a standard bisection task was applied. Although the lottery tasks’ payoffs were only hypothetical, a pronounced negativity was observed resembling the error related negativity (ERN) previously described in action monitoring research, but this occurred only for choices far away from the indifference point between money and lottery. By contrast, the bisection task failed to evoke an ERN irrespective of the responses’ correctness. Based on these findings we are reasoning that only decisions made in the lottery task achieved a level of subjective relevance that activates cognitive-emotional monitoring. In terms of economic sciences, our findings support the view that the bisection method is unaffected by any kind of probability valuation or other parameters related to risk and in combination with the lottery task can, therefore, be used to differentiate between payoff and probability valuation.Utility function; neuroeconomics; error-related negativity; executive functions; cognitive electrophysiology; lottery,bisection

Cognitive Control in Russian–German Bilinguals

Bilingual speakers are faced with the problem to keep their languages apart, but do so with interindividually varying success. Cognitive control abilities might be an important factor to explain such interindividual differences. Here we compare two late, balanced and highly proficient bilingual groups (mean age 24 years, L1 Russian, L2 German) which were established according to their language control abilities on a bilingual picture-naming task. One group had difficulties to remain in the instructed target language and switched unintentionally to the non-target language (“switchers”), whereas the other group rarely switched unintentionally (“non-switchers”). This group-specific behavior could not be explained by language background, socio-cultural, or demographic variables. Rather, the non-switchers also demonstrated a faster and better performance on four cognitive control tests (Tower of Hanoi, Ruff Figural Fluency Test, Divided Attention, Go/Nogo). Here, we focus on two additional executive function tasks, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Flanker task requiring conflict monitoring and conflict resolution. Non-switchers outperformed switchers with regard to speed and accuracy, and were better at finding and applying the correct rules in the WCST. Similarly, in the Flanker task non-switchers performed faster and better on conflict trials and had a higher correction rate following an error. Event-related potential recordings furthermore revealed a smaller error-related negativity in the non-switchers, taken as evidence for a more efficient self-monitoring system. We conclude that bilingual language performance, in particular switching behavior, is related to performance on cognitive control tasks. Better cognitive control, including conflict monitoring, results in decreased unintentional switching

The productive Liaison of media education and school culture. Indicating implications of joining the concepts of media education and school culture for media education as a discipline

Gegenwärtig werden häufig Fragen nach der Konstituierung der Medienpädagogik als Disziplin gestellt und Antwortversuche aus je unterschiedlicher Perspektive formuliert. Der vorliegende Beitrag unternimmt einen solchen Versuch durch die Diskussion von Implikationen weitreichender Medialisierungsprozesse für die «Disziplinierung» der Medienpädagogik und ihrer Forschungsfelder am Beispiel von Schule als genuin pädagogischem Ort. Die Zusammenführung einer poststrukturalistisch gedachten Medienbildung und einer damit einhergehenden Entdichotomisierung von Subjekt und Welt respektive Subjekt und Medien mit dem Konzept der Schulkultur und einem damit verbundenen holistischen Blick auf das Schulgefüge eröffnet eine neue, produktive und gleichsam kritische Perspektive, ohne dabei jeweils auf eine vereinfachte Gesellschaftskritik zurück zu fallen. Dies stellt bisherige medienpädagogische Theoreme und insbesondere das Medienkompetenzkonzept, das über den medienpädagogischen Wirkungskreis hinaus auch in anderen Kontexten etabliert ist, in Frage. So wird eine neue Perspektive auf Medienpädagogik und ihre Ziele eröffnet, die nicht vorschnell in Abgrenzungsmechanismen unterschiedlicher medienpädagogischer Schulen verfällt, sondern zu aller erst eine «offene» sein will.Media education is a heterogeneous discipline and discussed from different meta-disciplines such as society, media science and pedagogy and therefor is generating many different concepts. But these concepts are more or less based on the same idea of the relationship of subject and world or subject and media, which is mostly drawn as a meeting of two entities, whereby the subject has to be protected from and prepared for the influences of media. We suggest an approach, which brings together the concept of – the German – ‹Medienbildung› and ‹school culture›. In this post-structural approach subject and world respectively media are embedded in an overarching system. In this embeddedness the subject has to articulate itself within media to author it as a subject. Similar to that school can be thought as system of actors and actants, which is perceivable by processing their daily routine. This approach is as critical as others, but is not making a separation of subject and world at first. Considering social developments and the expansion of media in all spheres of life, this approach is willing to leave traditional paths and to be open for future developments which are stroking our ideas of media, subject and school so far

Education with Media or Education within Media? Designing change processes of school in terms of cultural changes

Gegenwärtig erfährt der Diskurs um Medienbildung einen enormen Aufschwung, was sich u. a. in zahlreichen Publikationen hierzu zeigt. Bezieht man sich dabei sowohl auf die Eigenständigkeit und theoretische wie praktische Eigenheit der Begriffe ‹Bildung› und ‹Medien›, als auch auf die Besonderheit der Verbindung zur ‹Medienbildung›, scheint es angezeigt, eine solche unter je gegebenen historischen Bedingungen von Selbst und Welt zu verstehen. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt gegenwärtige soziokulturelle Bedingungen im Spannungsfeld steigender Unsicherheiten, Kontingenzen und Ambivalenzen, die es angesichts einer weitreichenden Mediatisierung der Lebenswelt für eine Vergegenwärtigung von Schule zu beachten gilt. Dem liegt ein poststrukturalistisches Verständnis des Beziehungsverhältnisses von Selbst und Welt bzw. Selbst und Medien zu Grunde. Die (Weiter-)Entwicklung von Schule wird im vorliegenden Beitrag als Transformationsprozess der Schulkultur ‹im Medium› skizziert, der nicht bei der Implementierung von medialen Tools in den weitgehend gleichbleibenden Unterricht stehen bleiben darf. Schulentwicklung meint vielmehr die umfängliche Transformation von Schulkultur angesichts einer mediatisierten Lebenswelt unter Einbezug des gesamten Schulgefüges.In educational sciences a long on-going debate of enhancing learning processes by means of learning technologies and/or empowering students to a critical, reflective and creative usage of all forms and sets of media can be found. Today's fundamental social and cultural change is extensively discussed in many analyses of society and its evolutional tendencies of further development. The initial point of this discussion can be found in the theoretical approach of poststructuralism and postmodernism. Trying to describe the relationship of the individual human being and the society as well as the relationship of the individual and media in a poststructural way, an overall structural network of interrelated elements can be outlined, which is mainly affected by social networks spread in online settings. Following the pedagogical vesting of empowering students to live analogues to historical social preconditions, the advancement of school as the main pedagogical institution has to consider this social changes and challenges in consequence of the fundamental process of mediatisation. As a result the design process of changing the cultural structures of school has to follow the main task of thinking school not only with media, but within media

Functional connectivity of reward processing in the brain

Controversial results have been reported concerning the neural mechanisms involved in the processing of rewards and punishments. On the one hand, there is evidence suggesting that monetary gains and losses activate a similar fronto-subcortical network. On the other hand, results of recent studies imply that reward and punishment may engage distinct neural mechanisms. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we investigated both regional and interregional functional connectivity patterns while participants performed a gambling task featuring unexpectedly high monetary gains and losses. Classical univariate statistical analysis showed that monetary gains and losses activated a similar fronto-striatallimbic network, in which main activation peaks were observed bilaterally in the ventral striatum. Functional connectivity analysis showed similar responses for gain and loss conditions in the insular cortex, the amygdala, and the hippocampus that correlated with the activity observed in the seed region ventral striatum, with the connectivity to the amygdala appearing more pronounced after losses. Larger functional connectivity was found to the medial orbitofrontal cortex for negative outcomes. The fact that different functional patterns were obtained with both analyses suggests that the brain activations observed in the classical univariate approach identifi es the involvement of different functional networks in the current task. These results stress the importance of studying functional connectivity in addition to standard fMRI analysis in reward-related studies

Different Methods to Define Utility Functions Yield Similar Results but Engage Different Neural Processes

Although the concept of utility is fundamental to many economic theories, up to now a generally accepted method determining a subject's utility function is not available. We investigated two methods that are used in economic sciences for describing utility functions by using response-locked event-related potentials in order to assess their neural underpinnings. For determining the certainty equivalent, we used a lottery game with probabilities to win p = 0.5, for identifying the subjects’ utility functions directly a standard bisection task was applied. Although the lottery tasks’ payoffs were only hypothetical, a pronounced negativity was observed resembling the error related negativity (ERN) previously described in action monitoring research, but this occurred only for choices far away from the indifference point between money and lottery. By contrast, the bisection task failed to evoke an remarkable ERN irrespective of the responses’ correctness. Based on these findings we are reasoning that only decisions made in the lottery task achieved a level of subjective relevance that activates cognitive-emotional monitoring. In terms of economic sciences, our findings support the view that the bisection method is unaffected by any kind of probability valuation or other parameters related to risk and in combination with the lottery task can, therefore, be used to differentiate between payoff and probability valuation

Microstructural Brain Differences Predict Functional Hemodynamic Responses in a Reward Processing Task

Many aspects of human behavior are driven by rewards, yet different people are differentially sensitive to rewards and punishment. In this study, we showthat white matter microstructure inthe uncinate/inferiorfronto-occipitalfasciculus, defined byfractional anisotropy values derived from diffusion tensor magnetic resonance images, correlates with both short-term (indexed by the fMRI blood oxygenation level-dependent response to reward in the nucleus accumbens) and long-term (indexed by the trait measure sensitivity to punishment) reactivityto rewards.Moreover,traitmeasures of reward processingwere also correlatedwith reward-relatedfunctional activation in the nucleus accumbens. The white matter tract revealed by the correlational analysis connects the anterior temporal lobe with the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex and also supplies the ventral striatum. The pattern of strong correlations suggests an intimate relationship betweenwhitematter structure and reward-related behaviorthatmay also play a rolein a number of pathological conditions, such as addiction and pathological gambling