PSYC 108 Cognitive Neuroscience Midterm Study Guide

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and definitions from the PSYC 108 Cognitive Neuroscience course relevant to the midterm exam.

Attention

The cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring others.

Bottom-up processing

Information processing that begins with the external stimulus, moving from simple to complex.

Top-down processing

Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, such as expectations and prior knowledge.

Hemispatial neglect

A condition in which a person is unaware of items to one side of their body, often due to right hemisphere damage.

ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

A neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

Amnesia

A deficit in memory caused by brain damage, disease, or psychological trauma, can be retrograde or anterograde.

Procedural memory

A type of long-term memory for the performance of particular types of actions.

Broca's Aphasia

A speech production disorder resulting from damage to Broca's area, leading to difficulty in forming grammatically correct sentences.

Wernicke's Aphasia

A language comprehension disorder resulting from damage to Wernicke's area, resulting in fluent but nonsensical speech.

Dual stream model of speech processing

A theory that proposes two pathways for processing language: dorsal for speech production and ventral for language comprehension.

Visual word recognition

The ability to recognize written words and their meanings.

Word superiority effect

The phenomenon whereby letters are better recognized when part of a word than when presented in isolation.

Dyslexia

A specific learning disability that affects reading, characterized by difficulties in word recognition and spelling.