Enhancing neurocognitive assessment using immersive virtual reality

Immersive virtual reality has significant potential as a tool for enhancing the reliability and specificity of neurocognitive assessment by supporting the ability to carry out carefully controlled, replicable, highly detailed and ecologically valid testing of peoples´ ability to perform complex executive functions such as planning and organizing, problem-solving and multitasking, and selective attention and inhibitory control, which are difficult to evaluate using standard paper-and-pencil measures of basic cognitive abilities such as memory, learning, or reasoning. We begin this short paper with an overview of current diagnostic needs in the field of neuropsychology, and a vision of the advantages that immersive virtual reality has the potential to offer as a diagnostic platform. We then briefly summarize our preliminary efforts to develop a robust virtual reality platform for neuropsychological assessment that incorporates a variety of physiological metrics as well as detailed measures of multiple attributes of task performance in a Virtual Environments Grocery Store (VEGS).