[Cognition for visual perception of a student apprentice of dental hygiene to the presence of a parent beside the dental chair for dental treatment]

Abstract

With a view to finding out how the dental hygienist looks at and recognizes the changes in facial expression and behavior of a mother who is staying by her child just receiving dental care in the treating room, actions which the mother takes near her child were recorded and subjected to observation by a dental-hygienist apprentice. The eye movements of the apprentice were then recorded and analyzed, using the Visicon-Eye-Camera. The results obtained are as follows: 1. In all scenes of the test image, the subject closely observed the mother's face, the child's face and trunk and the dentist's face at a high frequency. 2. In all scenes of the test image, the subject tended to observe closely the mother's face in the former half of his observation and the child's face and the dentist's face in the latter half. 3. In a scene during which the mother looked anxious, the subject tended to look a longer time per observation. 4. In a scene during which there occurred only a change in the mother's expression, the subject frequently took the mother's face, the child's face or the dentist's face as his primary point of observation. 5. The scanning path of the subject was not influenced by a change in the mother's expression, but rather was influenced by the addition of new elements into the scene such as her grasping of the child's hands. 6. In case of the mother beginning to make a body movement, the subject frequently took the mother's face and her child's face as his primary point of observation. 7. The subject tended to make close observation of the dentist's face less frequently with more changes in the mother's behavior, suggesting his tacit cognition of the dentist being there. 8. The above results reveal that the dental hygienist is not visually influenced by the co-existence of a mother and her child just receiving dental care in the treating room if only she is looking at her child in a relaxed manner without any anxious expressions and attitudes.