Objectives: To assess the public’s opinion of different levels of fluorosis using an implicit measure of attitude (the response latency technique) in order to avoid participants’ responses being influenced by social norms of politeness.
Methods: Facial images of male and female subjects were digitally manipulated to reproduce normal dental enamel, mild, moderate, and severe fluorosis. These images were then displayed, life-size, on a computer monitor. Each image was systematically paired with 18 personality traits, identified as relevant to fluorosis. Thirty nine participants responded by pressing a “yes” or “no” key to indicate whether or not each trait described each image. The time taken to respond (the response latency) was recorded by computer. Response latency has been shown to measure the attitude strength, with shorter response latencies predicting stronger or more relevant attitudes. Participants completed the study under one of two experimental conditions, they either were, or were not, cued to look at the mouth.
Results: Irrespective of cueing, participants demonstrated significant differences (p<0.001) in their attitude valence (as indicated by their response direction – “yes” versus “no” for positive and negative descriptions), between severe fluorosis and the other levels of fluorosis. The relevance fluorosis to participant’s attitudes (as measured by response latency) resulted in mean response latencies from 900 to 2725 ms. These differed significantly across levels of fluorosis (p<0.05), for cued but not for uncued participants.
Conclusions: Implicitly measured attitudes showed discrimination between levels of fluorosis for cued but not uncued participants. Work is ongoing to determine the extent to which normal enamel, mild, and moderate fluorosis are perceived as being different from each other.
The support of the Borrow Dental Milk Foundation is acknowledged gratefully.