Quantifying Early Psychomotor Improvement in Pre‐Dental Simulation Over Time
Clarissa S. G. da Fontoura, Nicole Alkhouri, Ban Al‐Sahab, Elizabeth A. Van TubergenABSTRACT
Objective
Early psychomotor performance in dentistry is shaped less by classroom knowledge than by experience‐dependent motor learning: novices must translate perceptual targets into controlled instrument motions, compare outcomes to explicit criteria, and adjust on the next attempt. The pace of that early adaptation and the point at which students' self‐judgements align with expert ratings remains under‐described. This study quantified short‐term improvement on a standardized preclinical task over five sessions and characterized changes in student self‐ratings and faculty ratings over the same period.
Methods
In a prospective, repeated‐measures design, 18 pre‐dental learners completed five weekly sessions of a standardized bench‐top preparation under direct vision. Each product was scored with a five‐category analytic rubric mapped to a 0–100 composite by the student (self) and independently by faculty. When two products were produced early in training, their scores were averaged per learner for that session. Outcomes were summarized two ways: a per‐session view using all available observations (n varies by session) and a longitudinal, complete‐case trajectory across all five sessions ( n = 17). The study was determined exempt by the institutional review board; informed consent was obtained.
Results
Cohort performance increased across the five sessions, and early self–faculty alignment emerged after the initial exposure. In the complete‐case trajectory, student mean scores (±SD) significantly rose from 55.9 ± 19.38 at Session 1 to 73.47 ± 11.51 at Session 5; faculty means significantly rose from 36.94 ± 16.48 to 69.72.7 ± 13.96. Per‐session summaries showed a student–evaluator difference at Session 1 that was not observed in Sessions 2–5, indicating rapid reduction of initial miscalibration. Across the training sequence, improvements were progressive for both self and faculty ratings, with narrowing variability and higher central tendency by Session 5. Taken together, the pattern depicts an early calibration phase (first session) followed by steady, cohort‐level gains under repeated, criterion‐referenced practice with feedback.
Conclusions
Novice pre‐dental learners demonstrated clear, quantifiable improvement over five sessions, with self‐ratings aligning to evaluator judgements after the first exposure and continued performance gains thereafter. These findings support early curricula that front‐load structured repetition with explicit criteria, guided self‐assessment anchored to faculty standards, and timely, information‐rich feedback to accelerate the earliest phase of psychomotor skill development.