A Review of Virtual Classroom Environments for Neuropsychological Assessment

Parsons, Thomas D.; Rizzo, Albert

doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-9482-3_11

Cited by 23 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Immersive VR has been applied in neuropsychological research targeting, for example, attention, executive functions, and memory (see review by Kim et al, 2021), and it is gradually becoming more popular as research and clinical tool in the field of neuropsychology (Krohn et al, 2020). In children, HMD-VR has been successfully used to implement conventional experimental tasks, such as a variant of the widely used Continuous Performance Test where the task is performed in a virtual classroom environment (see, e.g., Parsons & Rizzo, 2019). One major benefit of VR is that it also allows the creation of complex, realistic everyday scenarios while simultaneously providing precise control over test parameters and measurements (Parsons et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

EPELI: a novel virtual reality task for the assessment of goal-directed behavior in real-life contexts

Seesjärvi

Puhakka

Aronen

et al. 2022

Psychological Research

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A recently developed virtual reality task, EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving), quantifies goal-directed behavior in naturalistic conditions. Participants navigate a virtual apartment, performing household chores given by a virtual character. EPELI aims to tap attention, executive function, and prospective memory. To ensure its applicability to further research and clinical work and to study its relationship to relevant background factors, we examined several key properties of EPELI in 77 typically developing 9–13-year-old children. These included EPELI’s internal consistency, age and gender differences, sensitivity to gaming experience, head-mounted display (HMD) type, and verbal recall ability, as well as its relationships with parent-rated everyday executive problems. Of the eight EPELI measures, the following six showed acceptable internal consistency: task and navigation efficacy, number of correctly performed tasks and overall actions, time monitoring, and controller movement. Some measures were associated with age, gender, or verbal encoding ability. Moreover, EPELI performance was associated with parent-rated everyday executive problems. There were no significant associations of gaming background, task familiarity, or HMD type with the EPELI measures. These results attest to the reliability and ecological validity of this new virtual reality tool for the assessment of attention, executive functions, and prospective memory in children.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

EPELI: a novel virtual reality task for the assessment of goal-directed behavior in real-life contexts

Seesjärvi

Puhakka

Aronen

et al. 2022

Psychological Research

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“…Regarding the latter, the MOXO-dCPT uses dynamic distractions, both visual and auditory, which simulate real-world settings (e.g., a barking dog, the opening of a bottle, and a crying baby). The use of these distractions joins the growing use of advanced technologies, such as virtual reality (Parsons & Rizzo, 2019), that aim to better simulate real life during the test. This, as opposed to other CPTs which do not use distractors (e.g., the T.O.V.A; Greenberg et al, 2018), was suggested to enhance the MOXO-dCPT ecological validity and, consequently, its utility (Berger & Cassuto, 2014; Cassuto et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye Tracking During a Continuous Performance Test: Utility for Assessing ADHD Patients

et al. 2020

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Objective: The use of continuous performance tests (CPTs) for assessing ADHD related cognitive impairment is ubiquitous. Novel psychophysiological measures may enhance the data that is derived from CPTs and thereby improve clinical decision-making regarding diagnosis and treatment. As part of the current study, we integrated an eye tracker with the MOXO-dCPT and assessed the utility of eye movement measures to differentiate ADHD patients and healthy controls. Method: Adult ADHD patients and gender/age-matched healthy controls performed the MOXO-dCPT while their eye movements were monitored ( n = 33 per group). Results: ADHD patients spent significantly more time gazing at irrelevant regions, both on the screen and outside of it, than healthy controls. The eye movement measures showed adequate ability to classify ADHD patients. Moreover, a scale that combined eye movement measures enhanced group prediction, compared to the sole use of conventional MOXO-dCPT indices. Conclusions: Integrating an eye tracker with CPTs is a feasible way of enhancing diagnostic precision and shows initial promise for clarifying the cognitive profile of ADHD patients. Pending replication, these findings point toward a promising path for the evolution of existing CPTs.

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“…Another cognitive task for which several different HMD versions exist is the Continuous Performance Test. However, several of them do not merely aim to be faithful replications of the FSD versions, but also take advantage of HMDs' extended possibilities, for example, by including extraneous distractors (see the meta-analysis by Parsons et al, 2019). To study the convergent validity of an HMD-based Continuous Performance Test coined as AULA, Nesplora, Díaz-Orueta and colleagues (2014) compared it to a FSD version (Conners' Continuous Performance Test) in a group of children aged 6-16 years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Goal-oriented Behavior in Virtual Reality: Children Prefer Head-mounted Displays but Flat Screens Provide a Viable Performance Measure for Remote Testing

Seesjärvi¹,

Laine²,

Kasteenpohja³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: EPELI (Executive Performance of Everyday LIving) is a Virtual Reality (VR) task that has been developed to study goal-directed behavior in everyday life contexts. To see if an immersive version implemented with a head-mounted display (HMD) and a non-immersive version employing a flat screen display (FSD) yield similar results, we had 72 typically developing 9- to 13-year-old children to play both versions in a counterbalanced order. The children’s everyday executive functions were assessed with the parent-rated Behavior Rating Inventory for Executive Functions (BRIEF) questionnaire. To assess the applicability of EPELI for online testing, half of the FSD version gameplays were conducted remotely and the rest in the laboratory.RESULTS: All EPELI performance measures were correlated across the versions. The children’s performance was mostly similar in the two versions, but small effects reflecting higher performance in FSD-EPELI were found in the measures of Total score, Task efficacy, and Time-based prospective memory score. The children engaged in more active time monitoring in FSD-EPELI. While the children evaluated the feeling of presence and the usability of both versions favorably, most children preferred HMD-EPELI, and evaluated its environment to be more involving and realistic. Both versions showed only negligible problems with the interface quality. No differences in task performance or subjective evaluations were found between the home-based and laboratory-based assessments of FSD-EPELI. In both EPELI versions, the efficacy measures were correlated with BRIEF on the first assessment, but not on the second. This raises questions about the stability of the associations reported between executive function tasks and questionnaires. CONCLUSIONS: Both the HMD and FSD versions of EPELI are viable tools for the naturalistic assessment of goal-directed behavior in children. While the HMD version provides a more immersive user experience and naturalistic movement tracking, the FSD version can maximize scalability, reachability, and cost efficacy, as it can be used with common hardware and remotely. Taken together, the findings highlight similarities between the HMD and FSD versions of a cognitively complex VR task, but also underline the specific advantages of these common presentation modes.

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A Review of Virtual Classroom Environments for Neuropsychological Assessment

Cited by 23 publications

References 90 publications

EPELI: a novel virtual reality task for the assessment of goal-directed behavior in real-life contexts

EPELI: a novel virtual reality task for the assessment of goal-directed behavior in real-life contexts

Eye Tracking During a Continuous Performance Test: Utility for Assessing ADHD Patients

Assessing Goal-oriented Behavior in Virtual Reality: Children Prefer Head-mounted Displays but Flat Screens Provide a Viable Performance Measure for Remote Testing

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