Direct and indirect manual dexterity skills of early clinical dental students

Objectives: Fine manual skills are learned during "phantom" course. The aim of this study was to evaluate the fine motor skills and learning curve of dental students in direct and indirect vision tasks using two conventional manual dexterity tests.
Methods: 39 4th year dental students (24 female, 15 male, 23-40Y) performed two manual dexterity tests: O'connor Tweezer test and Purdue pegboard test using direct and indirect/mirror vision. O'connor Tweezer test requires insertion of 100 pins into holes of a pegboard. The score is the time (s). The Purdue pegboard test requires inserting pins during 30s into holes and is carried out in 3 stages: by right hand, left hand and alternating hands. Then, mission of assembling collars and washers on pins is carried out (60s). The score is the number of parts inserted in each stage. Learning curve was tested by repeating 5 times the assembly task (direct vision).
Results: All students showed decrease manual dexterity scores when performing indirectly (p<0.0001). Completion indirect vision task in O'connor test was 3.3 longer than the direct task (p<0.0001). Performing tasks in both hands showed reduced performances compared to dominant or non-dominant hand. Improvement in dexterity with practice was obtained during 4 successive repetitions (p<0.05).
Conclusions: Manual dexterities skills improved significantly with training. Practicing indirect visions, tests may improve performances in phantom course. Establishing this baseline data will enable discovering difficulties in motor skills and improve the motor learning process