To observe the way child patients look at the dentist in the clinic, experiments were carried out with a photograph of the face of the dentist, who was looking straight at the subjects. The eye movements of the subjects were measured with the aid of a Visicon eye camera. An analysis then followed of the measurements. The children's visual reactions could be classified into the following four types: Their eyes (a) move from the center of the face to the outside; (b) are riveted on the face; (c) move from the outside to the face; and (d) are kept hovering around. the peripheral zone of the face. With the whole area of the face of the dentist including the contour given as the “figure” and the background as the “ground”, multivariate analysis (quantification theory 2nd family) and factor analysis were made of the relationship)between the “figure” and the “ground” of the child subjects to see if there were some relationship between the children's gaze and those factors associated with their mothers and home environment, and the results of the Takagi-Sakamoto juvenile personality test and other tests.
The following is a summary of our findings:
1. Of the total number of subjects.97% showed that their eyes moved within the confines of the “figure” before resting at the primary point of observation, meaning that they looked at the face in its entirety on the instant.
2. The remaining 3% showed that their eyes remained on the “ground”.
3. The psychological and personality factors of the subjects had certain effects on their manner of looking, albeit this was small.
4. Environmental factors and mother-child relationships had some bearing on the eye movements.
5. On the correlation axis where the correlation ratio is the largest, Group (d)was located, next coming Group (b), followed by Group (a) and (c).
6. It was also found that Types A and D in the Yatabe-Guilford personality inventory and the socially and personally stable characteristics in the Takagi-Sakamoto test are correlated with other factors.