Mental imagery and intraoral local anesthesia

This study was designed to determine whether mental imagery ability improves through mental practice, and whether mental imagery practice can help students learn to administer intraoral local anesthetics. Pre- and post-test measures of imagery ability and first and final measures of performance in local anesthetic administration were examined in dental hygiene students. Results indicated a significant increase in mean scores for the Gordon Test of Imagery Control from pre- to post-test within the experimental group. Although there was a trend toward higher mean performance scores for the experimental subjects, they performed significantly better than the controls only on the posterior superior alveolar nerve block. There were, however, significant correlations between imagery ability and clinical performance for the combined groups. Mental imagery ability improved with practice and appeared to assist in learning the technique of intraoral local anesthetic administration.