Researchers use VR to assess cognitive abilities in a real-world environment

Virtual reality isn’t just for games. Researchers can use virtual reality (VR) to assess participants’ attention, memory, and problem-solving abilities in real-world settings. By using VR technology to find out how people complete their daily tasks, such as creating shopping lists, researchers find clinical groups struggling with executive functions to manage their daily lives. I can help you better.

Lead author Zhengsi Chang is a PhD student working in the lab of Dr. Daniel Krawczyk, Deputy Director of Centrefor Brain Health®. The team, along with Brandon Pires, a researcher at Texas Tech University’s Center for Health Sciences, can use VR to effectively test the executive function load of participants, or can be handled by humans to achieve their goals. I investigated the amount of information.Their findings are recent Human Behavior Report Computer..

Researchers have adopted the “kitchen test” of the virtual reality functional capacity evaluation tool (VRFCAT). Participants plan a trip to the grocery store by comparing the ingredients in the kitchen cabinet with the list of recipes. Creating a shopping list is a daily task, so you need to have an accurate picture of participants’ daily working memory and performance. “Function-driven tasks using VR technology can help balance ecological relevance with control,” says Chan.

In the virtual kitchen, 42 healthy adult college students remembered a lot of ingredients from the recipe list. Participants then navigated the kitchen to check the ingredients and tried to remember the ingredients they found. They went back to the recipe list and erased all the ingredients they didn’t need at the store. After checking the shopping list, participants picked up their wallets and left the virtual kitchen.

To test the executive function load, researchers increased the number of materials and recipes they remembered. Participants took time to complete their shopping list when they needed to learn more material. This is in line with researchers’ predictions that increased functional load reduces participant task performance, suggesting that this VR evaluation can effectively test executive function load.

Computers in Human Behavior Reports Volume 2, August-December 2020, 10035 Researchers were surprised that the working memory of participants had nothing to do with task execution status. “People spend the same amount of time on tasks and get the same number of errors, but they can have completely different working memory capacities,” Chan said.

Upon further analysis, the researchers found that participants were actually switching strategies as executive function load increased. Some participants tried to memorize as many ingredients as possible before looking at the recipe, while others frequently switched between searching the cupboard and looking up the recipe list.

This strategic switch explains why researchers did not see the relationship between performance and participants’ working memory.

This study shows that our strategy has a dramatic impact on our capabilities. Entering a planned and prepared task will help you get the most out of your brain and significantly improve your performance. Participant performance reflects their executive function and supports the idea that researchers’ VR ratings can effectively test the load of executive function on participants. “

Dr. Daniel Krouchik, Deputy Director of Brain Health Center

Researchers want to use VR evaluation to help people suffering from executive dysfunction. “We used VR technology to create executive function assessments that could be used in neuropsychology to understand how veterans and other clinical populations manage their daily lives,” said Chan. I will.