Design of a toolkit for real-time executive function assessment in custom-made virtual experiences and interventions

Williams, Anna; Alikhademi, Kiana; Gilbert, Juan E.

doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102734

Cited by 15 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Regardless of the procedure [47,54] or the aim of the study [48,49,55] , none of the previous VR adaptations of the Simon and anker tasks were capable of making the most of the possibilities offered by virtual reality when transferring and testing these tasks in a creative, plausible and realistic way. The current work represents a new ecologically valid alternative for assessing inhibitory control as a relevant construct of executive functions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…New generation VR headsets are price-accessible and powerful enough to provide high-resolution stimuli presentation within realistic and interactive 3D environments, providing increased ecological validity, exibility, sensory feedback, and performance recording [40,41] -see Gaggioli [42] for an early review of VR application. In fact, there are many successful examples of the use of VR as an assessment tool for skills related to EF, such as working memory and task-switching [43] , cognitive load in navigation [44] , memory [45] , behavioural responses in eating disorders [46] and, more recently, cognitive function in terms of reasoning and attention switching [47] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing executive functions in the real world is virtually possible

Rocabado

Duñabeitia

2022

Preprint

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Executive functions have become a popular research topic since the beginning of the century. Their central role in our daily routines makes them the most representative form of behaviour regulation. Even though there is no general agreement about how they can be classified, there is common consensus that cognitive scientists need to understand their nature and how they interact to modulate human behaviour. Inhibitory control is one of the main exponents of executive functions, and the last decades have witnessed an exponential increase of studies on the inhibitory component thanks to the development of chronometric tasks associated with paradigms that allowed to explore how humans behave in contexts in which resistance to interference is needed. Among the different paradigms typically used, the Simon and flanker tasks are probably the most popular ones. Since their creation, many variants of these tasks have been developed in order to assess inhibitory control from different perspectives (e.g., in different samples or in combination with different research techniques). However, the use of these tasks has been typically governed by classical presentation modalities within laboratory settings. The accessibility of virtual reality technology has opened new research avenues to explore inhibitory skills using adaptations of classic paradigms such as the Simon and the flanker tasks to real-life contexts or settings. Thanks to virtual reality, research on executive function assessment can be undertaken with increased ecological validity, still ensuring laboratory-like controlled conditions and high precision in the measurements. Relying on this technology, here we present two state-of-the-art adaptations of the classical Simon and flanker tasks reinterpreted and adapted to real-world circumstances. Our results show that virtual reality is a reliable tool to assess inhibitory control that could provide valid experimental data with a high level of real-world transferability and generalizability.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing executive functions in the real world is virtually possible

Rocabado

Duñabeitia

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As participants could suffer from visual and hearing problems or have troubles with atten- tion, visual scenes have to be as simple as possible and search space should be reduced. During gameplay, simple and immediate data as a countdown timer, the number of remained chances to guess an answer, the current score or achieved goals are often shown to incentive the subject to answer as quickly and accurately as possible [3], [14], [17], [19], [20], [22], [24], [26], [28]- [31], [33], [38]- [41], [44], [49], [50], [52], [53], [71], [72], [79], [83], [96], [97], [99], [100], [106], [109], [115], [120], [124], [125], [130]- [132], [137], [138], [142], [150], [161], [164], [179], [191], [209], [211], [212], [231],…”

Section: Interaction Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Immediate feedback after actions can also be useful, as it could help the users knowing when they succeeded or failed and why, recognizing their errors, recovering strategies, reducing their frustration and increasing their motivation. To this purpose, multimodal feedback are often provided, through congratulation messages, hints or events, like objects disappearing if correctly selected or sounds of clapping hands to highlight the correctness of a given answer [4]- [6], [13], [20], [41], [43], [50], [57], [59], [106], [112], [125], [133], [162], [208], [210]- [212]. Finally, since the benefits of cognitive training might only be noticed in the long term, healthy competition is greatly appreciated as it can positively affect patients psychological well-being and promote social networking.…”

Section: Interaction Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%