Research

Function-led assessment of children’s goal-directed behavior and ADHD symptoms in virtual reality Seesjärvi, E. Helda (2024) (ENG)

Objective, reliable, and ecologically valid measurement of goal-directed behavior and related cognitive processes, such as executive functions and prospective memory, has proven to be challenging. Difficulties in these cognitive domains can have severe consequences for everyday life, but current neuropsychological tests may not be optimal tools for the comprehensive assessment of such problems. It has been suggested that naturalistic tasks that simulate everyday life activities could provide the researcher and clinician with complementary means to better evaluate these important domains while allowing the assessment of other aspects of behavior, such as the symptoms of various clinical disorders like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Virtual reality tasks with eye tracking for mild spatial neglect assessment: a pilot study with acute stroke patients Uimonen, J., Villarreal, S., Laari, S., Arola, A., Ijäs, P., Salmi, J., Hietanen, M. Frontiers (2024) (ENG)

Increasing evidence shows that traditional neuropsychological tests are insensitive for detecting mild unilateral spatial neglect (USN), lack ecological validity, and are unable to clarify USN in all different spatial domains. Here we present a new, fully immersive virtual reality (VR) task battery with integrated eye tracking for mild visual USN and extinction assessment in the acute state of stroke to overthrow these limitations.

Real-world goal-directed behavior reveals aberrant functional connectivity in children with ADHD Merzon, L. PsyArXiv Preprints (2023) (ENG)

Functional connectomics is a popular approach to investigate the neural underpinnings of developmental disorders of which attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent. Nonetheless, neuronal mechanisms driving the aberrant functional connectivity resulting to ADHD symptoms remain largely unclear. Whereas resting state activity reflecting inherent ’tonic background activity’ is only vaguely connected to behavioral effects, naturalistic neuroscience has provided means to measure ’phasic brain dynamics’ associated with overt manifestation of the symptoms. Here we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data in three experimental conditions, an active virtual reality (VR) task where the participants freely execute goal-directed actions, a passive naturalistic Video Viewing task, and a standard Resting State condition.

Spontaneous memory strategies in a videogame simulating everyday memory tasks Matti Laine, Jussi Jylkkä, Liisa Ritakallio, Tilda Eräste, Suvi Kangas, Alexandra Hering, Sascha Zuber, Matthias Kliegel, Daniel Fellman, and Juha Salmi Sage Journals

People can use different internal strategies to manage their daily tasks, but systematic research on these strategies and their significance for actual performance is still quite sparse. Here we examined self-reported internal strategy use with a 10-block version of the videogame EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) in a group of 202 neurotypical adults of 18–50 years of age.

Fluctuations of attention during self-paced naturalistic goal-directed behavior in ADHD. Salmi, J., Merzon, L., Eräste, T., Seesjärvi, E., Huhdanpää, H., Aronen, ET., Mannerkoski, M., MacInnes, WJ., Laine, M. JAACAP OPEN (2023) (ENG)

Temporal fluctuations of attention detected with strictly controlled neuropsychological tests is an important objective behavioral marker for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We examined whether intra-individual variability in response latencies is detectable also in more realistic open-ended virtual contexts where the participants can freely interact with the surroundings when performing instructed everyday tasks from memory.

Assessing goal-directed behavior in virtual reality with the neuropsychological task EPELI Seesjärvi, E., Laine, M., Kasteenpohja, K., Salmi, J. Frontiers (2023) (ENG)

EPELI (Executive Performance of Everyday LIving) is a Virtual Reality (VR) task that was developed to study goal-directed behavior in everyday life contexts in children. In this study, we had 72 typically developing 9- to 13-year-old children to play EPELI with an immersive version implemented with a head-mounted display (HMD) and a non-immersive version employing a flat screen display (FSD) in a counterbalanced order to see if the two versions yield similar results.

Assessment of goal-directed behavior with the 3D videogame EPELI Jylkkä, J., Ritakallio, L., Merzon, L., Kangas, S., Kliegel, M., Zuber, S., Hering, A., Salmi, J., Laine, M. PLOS ONE (2023) (ENG)

EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) is a recently developed gaming tool for objective assessment of goal-directed behavior and prospective memory (PM) in everyday contexts. This pre-registered study examined psychometric features of a new EPELI adult online version, modified from the original child version and further developed for self-administered web-based testing at home.

Assessment of goal-directed behavior and prospective memory in adult ADHD with an online 3D videogame simulating everyday tasks Jylkkä, J. PsyArXiv Preprints (2023) (ENG)

The diagnosis of ADHD is based on real-life attentional-executive deficits, but they are harder to detect in adults than in children and objective quantitative measures reflecting these everyday problems are lacking.

Eye movement behavior in a real-world virtual reality task reveals ADHD in children Merzon, L., Pettersson, K., Aronen, E. T., Huhdanpää, H., Seesjärvi, E., Henriksson, L., MacInnes, J., Mannerkoski, M., Macaluso, E. & Salmitaival, J. Scientific Reports 12, Article number: 20308 (2022) (ENG)

Eye movements and other rich data obtained in virtual reality (VR) environments resembling situations where symptoms are manifested could help in the objective detection of various symptoms in clinical conditions.

EPELI: a novel virtual reality task for the assessment of goal-directed behavior in real-life contexts Seesjärvi, E., Puhakka, J., Aronen, E. T., Hering, A., Zuber, S., Merzon, L., Kliegel, M., Laine, M. & Salmitaival, J. Psychological Research (2022) (ENG)

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.

Quantifying ADHD Symptoms in Open-Ended Everyday Life Contexts With a New Virtual Reality Task Seesjärvi, E., Puhakka, J., Aronen, E. T., Lipsanen, J., Mannerkoski, M., Hering, A., Zuber, S., Kliegel, M., Laine, M., & Salmi, J. Journal of Attention Disorders, 18 (2021) (ENG)

To quantify goal-directed behavior and ADHD symptoms in naturalistic conditions, we developed a virtual reality task, EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving), and tested its predictive, discriminant and concurrent validity.

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