Compatibility of elastomeric impression materials for use as soft tissue casts.

The communication of soft tissue contours from the clinical situation to the laboratory technician through the laboratory phases of the dental implant restoration is enhanced with the use of soft tissue casts. Modern elastomeric impression materials can function well as both the master impression and soft tissue cast materials. The purpose of this study was to test the compatibility of a variety of elastomeric impression materials and commercially available soft tissue cast materials with various matrix impression materials. Chemical interaction between the materials may result in adhesion or inhibition of the set of the soft tissue cast material. The results of this study indicated that consideration must be given to material compatibility if predictably successful results are to be achieved in soft tissue cast fabrication.

Patient's ability to localize adjustment sites on the mandibular denture.

Adjustment of new complete dentures is often required. Patients may attempt to guide such adjustments by pointing out offending areas on the dentures to the clinician. Results of this study indicate that patient-perceived locations rarely coincided with the actual area on the denture that required adjustment as determined with the use of a dye-transfer indicating method. Accurate and minimal adjustments based on clinical findings rather than patient perceptions are required to avoid losing adaptation and extension of the new dentures unnecessarily.

Stimulus-response compatibility for vertically oriented stimuli and horizontally oriented responses: evidence for spatial coding.

It has previously been shown that, when stimuli positioned above or below a central fixation point ("up" and "down" stimuli) are assigned to left and right responses, the stimulus-response mapping up-left/down-right is more compatible than the mapping up-right/down-left for responses executed by the left hand in the left hemispace, but this relation is reversed for responses executed by the right hand in the right hemispace. In Experiment 1, each hand responded at locations in both hemispaces to dissociate the influence of hand identity from response location, and response location was found to be the determinant of relative compatibility. In Experiment 2 responses were made at the sagittal midline, and an inactive response switch was placed to the left or right to induce coding of the active switch as right or left, respectively. This manipulation of relative location had an effect similar to, although of lesser magnitude than, that produced by physically changing location of the response switch in Experiment 1. It is argued that these results are counter to predictions of a movement-preference account and consistent with the view that spatial coding underlies compatibility effects for orthogonally oriented stimulus and response sets.