How do medical students understand disease behaviors? Evidence from event-related potentials

Objective: To investigate how medical students process Western medicine (WM) terms vs. traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) terms and how this is impacted by analogical priming from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience. Methods: The experiments were designed as a 2 (TCM terms vs. WM terms) × 2 (correct terms vs. incorrect terms) × 2 (analogical priming task vs. non-priming task) scheme. A total of 26 medical students completed a non-priming judgment task and an analogical priming judgment task on medical terms. During the tasks, the participants were asked to make correct/incorrect judgments on WM terms and TCM terms, and their behavioral data and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Results: Behaviorally, the response speed and accuracy of WM terms were higher than those of TCM terms (both P