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Acquisition of dental skills in preclinical technique courses: influence of spatial and manual abilities

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Abstract

Sixty years of research have not added up to a concordant evaluation of the influence of spatial and manual abilities on dental skill acquisition. We used Ackerman’s theory of ability determinants of skill acquisition to explain the influence of spatial visualization and manual dexterity on the task performance of dental students in two consecutive preclinical technique courses. We measured spatial and manual abilities of applicants to Hamburg Dental School by means of a multiple choice test on Technical Aptitude and a wire-bending test, respectively. Preclinical dental technique tasks were categorized as consistent-simple and inconsistent-complex based on their contents. For analysis, we used robust regression to circumvent typical limitations in dental studies like small sample size and non-normal residual distributions. We found that manual, but not spatial ability exhibited a moderate influence on the performance in consistent-simple tasks during dental skill acquisition in preclinical dentistry. Both abilities revealed a moderate relation with the performance in inconsistent-complex tasks. These findings support the hypotheses which we had postulated on the basis of Ackerman’s work. Therefore, spatial as well as manual ability are required for the acquisition of dental skills in preclinical technique courses. These results support the view that both abilities should be addressed in dental admission procedures in addition to cognitive measures.

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Acknowledgments

Our special thanks go to Dr. Sascha Pieger for his helpful explanation of preclinical dentistry and supply with students’ grades. Furthermore, we thank Julia Weinberg, Johannes Marek, and Alexander Vogelsang for their essential support regarding all data issues and Dr. Eva Vahle Hinz and Lutz Knobloch for their endless rating of wire-bending samples. This project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (BMBF), funding code 01PL12033. The responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the publishers and authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology, Center for Experimental Medicine, Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany

    Anja Schwibbe, Christian Kothe & Wolfgang Hampe

  2. Unit of Work and Organizational Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Kiel, Olshausenstr. 62, 24098, Kiel, Germany

    Udo Konradt

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  1. Anja Schwibbe
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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4 and Figs. 4 and 5.

Table 4 Spearman’s rank order correlations between independent and dependent variables
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Fig. 4
figure 4

Scatterplots relating GPA, spatial and manual ability with performance in consistent-simple tasks in the first technique course

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Fig. 5
figure 5

Scatterplots relating GPA, spatial and manual ability with performance in inconsistent-complex tasks in the second technique course

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Schwibbe, A., Kothe, C., Hampe, W. et al. Acquisition of dental skills in preclinical technique courses: influence of spatial and manual abilities. Adv in Health Sci Educ 21, 841–857 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-016-9670-0

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