title: Children's perceptions of smile esthetics and their influence on social judgment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To define a threshold of acceptance of smile esthetics for children and adolescents.
  
  
  METHODS
  A systematic search in the medical literature (PubMed, PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine's Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Clinical Trials, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Google Scholar, and LILACs) was performed to identify all peer-reviewed papers reporting data regarding the evaluation of children's and adolescents' perceptions of dental esthetic factors. The search was conducted using a research strategy based on keywords such as "children," "adolescents," "smile aesthetics perception," "smile aesthetics evaluation." Studies analyzing smile esthetics involving at least 10 observers younger than 18 years of age were selected.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Among the 1667 analyzed articles, five studies were selected for the final review process. No study included in the review analyzed perception of smile anomalies in a quantitative or qualitative way, thus no threshold was identified for smile features. Among the analyzed samples, unaltered smiles were always significantly associated with better evaluation scores when compared with altered smiles.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Smile esthetics influence social perception during childhood and adolescence. However, thresholds of smile esthetic acceptance in children and adolescents are still not available.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rossini
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Parrini
authors.forename: Tommaso
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Castroflorio
authors.forename: Arturo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fortini
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Deregibus
authors.forename: Cesare L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Debernardi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D004955:Esthetics, Dental; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D010465:Perception; D012904:Smiling
keywords: Adolescents; Children; Smile esthetics; Social perception