Mirror Training in Three Dimensions for Dental Students

Abstract

Dental students have significantly improved skills of indirect vision following mirror exercises in two dimensions. The objective of this study was to assess whether freshmen improved these skills after mirror training in three dimensions. A pretest was given to 60 subjects, maneuvering a handpiece-shaped probe through a brass block maze. Total time, error time, and total errors were recorded for each of three perceptually different mirror positions. Subjects were then randomly divided into two groups. Group A participated in 2 training sessions; Group B (a control) received no training. Both groups then performed a posttest. Transformed time scores examined by analysis of variance indicated a significant difference for total time between Groups A and B at posttest at each mirror position. For error time, Groups A and B were significantly different at posttest at Positions 2 and 3. For total errors, groups were significantly different at posttest at Mirror Position 3 only. Indirect vision skills improved significantly with training in three dimensions.