The regulation of the jaw bite force in man

Abstract

Experiments were carried out on 12 adult subjects to measure their ability to grade forces between their anterior teeth when using different conditions of perceptual reference. The subjects placed their anterior teeth across a force transducer to produce isometric forces corresponding to a series of integers called by the experimenter in random order every two seconds. The value zero was taken to be zero force and the largest integer as their maximum comfortable bite. The results, which were analyzed by a technique based upon information theory, demonstrated that the mean performance of the subjects as a group was 2.5 bits, S.D. ± 0.3 (approximately 5 discrete levels) when 10 levels were attempted. When reinforcing references were regularly interspersed between the test integers, the mean performance was raised to 2.8 bits, S.D. ± 0.2 (approximately 6 levels). The use of 20 input levels raised the performance of 4 selected subjects to 3 bits (approximately 8 levels). The results suggest that bite force discriminatory ability is much better when an immediately preceding reference is used, than when an overall conceptual reference is employed.