scholarly journals Immersive virtual reality gameplay captures age differences in naturalistic prospective memory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Saito ◽  
Nathan Rose
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Prospective Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Phone Calls

Age differences in prospective memory (PM)—memory for delayed intentions—have shown paradoxical patterns between laboratory and naturalistic settings. Virtual reality (VR) has been used to try and enhance the ecological validity of PM assessments, but methodological differences and limited validation have undermined interpretation of previous findings. We compared age differences between VR- and naturalistic-based measures of PM performance for younger (18-30 years) and older (56-83 years) adults (N = 111) to explore the role of task context and familiarity. Participants completed PM tasks embedded in the Job Simulator VR videogame and a Breakfast task that involved setting a table and simulating breakfast food preparation. We also included two real-world measures in which participants tried to remember to exchange personal belongings with the experimenter (Belongings task) and return phone calls at specific times outside the lab (Call-back task). We found comparable age deficits in Job Simulator and the Breakfast task. However, the age-PM paradox persisted in the Belongings and Call-back tasks. Hierarchical regression modeling was conducted to determine the roles of working memory, vigilance, and personality traits in each. Regression analyses revealed that significant variance in lab-based PM performance was accounted for by individual differences in working memory and agreeableness in older adults, while variance in naturalistic PM performance was accounted for by vigilance and neuroticism in young adults. This study suggests that immersive VR gameplay helped to provide ecologically valid PM assessment and advance a theoretical account of the age-PM paradox with a systematic, task-based analysis of age and individual differences in PM. Different mediators predicted young and older adults’ PM differently across real-world and in-lab contexts (despite measuring similar, naturalistic PM in the same individuals in both VR and in real life). There are methodological, cognitive, & personality moderators, but the “paradox” appears to be a real developmental phenomenon.

Neuropsychology in the Real World

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 233-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Peper ◽  
Simone N. Loeffler
Keyword(s):  
Neuropsychological Assessment ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Traditional Assessment ◽  
Life Data ◽  
Real Life Data ◽  
Assessment And Treatment

Current ambulatory technologies are highly relevant for neuropsychological assessment and treatment as they provide a gateway to real life data. Ambulatory assessment of cognitive complaints, skills and emotional states in natural contexts provides information that has a greater ecological validity than traditional assessment approaches. This issue presents an overview of current technological and methodological innovations, opportunities, problems and limitations of these methods designed for the context-sensitive measurement of cognitive, emotional and behavioral function. The usefulness of selected ambulatory approaches is demonstrated and their relevance for an ecologically valid neuropsychology is highlighted.

scholarly journals Experimentally-induced and real-world acute anxiety have no effect on goal-directed behaviour

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
CM Gillan ◽  
MM Vaghi ◽  
FH Hezemans ◽  
Grothe S van Ghesel ◽  
J Dafflon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Healthy Volunteers ◽  
Real World ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Stressful Events ◽  
Panic Attacks ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Correlational Design ◽  
Acute Anxiety

AbstractCompulsivity is associated with failures in goal-directed control, an important cognitive faculty that protects against developing habits. But might this effect be explained by co-occurring anxiety? Previous studies have found goal-directed deficits in other anxiety disorders, and to some extent when healthy individuals are stressed, suggesting this is plausible. We carried out a causal test of this hypothesis in two experiments (between-subject N=88; within-subject N=50) that used the inhalation of hypercapnic gas (7.5% CO2) to induce an acute state of anxiety in healthy volunteers. In both experiments, we successfully induced anxiety, assessed physiologically and psychologically, but this did not affect goal-directed performance. In a third experiment (N=1413), we used a correlational design to test if real-life anxiety-provoking events (panic attacks, stressful events) impair goal-directed control. While small effects were observed, none survived controlling for individual differences in compulsivity. These data suggest that anxiety has no meaningful impact on goal-directed control.

scholarly journals Sounds of Healthy Aging: Assessing Everyday Cognitive Activity From Real-Life Audio Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 622-622
Author(s):  
Burcu Demiray ◽  
Minxia Luo ◽  
Matthew Grilli
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Prospective Memory ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
World Health ◽  
Recording Device

Abstract The healthy aging model of the World Health Organization (2015) highlights the value of assessing and monitoring everyday activities in understanding health in old age. This symposium includes four studies that used the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a portable recording device that periodically collects sound snippets in everyday life, to assess various real-life cognitive activities in the context of healthy aging. The four studies collected over 100,000 sound snippets (30-seconds long) over a few days from young and older adults in the US and Switzerland. Participants’ speech in the sound snippets were transcribed and coded for different cognitive activity information. Specifically, Haas and Kliegel have investigated the “prospective memory paradox” by examining the commonality and differences in utterances about retrospective and prospective memory failure in young and older adults’ everyday conversations. Demiray and colleagues investigated the relation between autobiographical memory functions and conversation types in young and older adults in relation to well-being. Luo and colleagues have identified the compensatory function of real-world contexts in cognitive aging: Their study showed that older adults benefited from talking with their spouse in producing complex grammatical structures. Finally, Polsinelli and colleagues found robust associations between language markers (e.g., prepositions, more numbers) and executive functions, highlighting the potential use of spontaneous speech in predicting cognitive status in healthy older adults. Finally, Prof. Matthew Grilli will serve as a discussant and provide an integrative discussion of the papers, informed by his extensive work on clinical and cognitive neuroscience of memory in relation to real-life contexts.

scholarly journals Individual Differences in Prospective Memory Offloading in Laboratory and Naturalistic Settings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter Ball ◽  
Philip Peper ◽  
Durna Alakbarova ◽  
Sam Gilbert ◽  
Gene Arnold Brewer
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Prospective Memory ◽  
High Ability ◽  
Memory Ability ◽  
Multiple Measures ◽  
Good Working

The current study examined whether offloading prospective memory (PM) demands onto the environment through the use of reminders eliminates PM differences typically seen between individuals that have poor or good working memory ability. Over two laboratory sessions scheduled one week apart, participants completed three versions of a PM offloading task with and without the use of reminders, along with multiple measures of working memory. Participants also generated a list of naturalistic intentions to fulfill between sessions and were given an intention to email the experimenter every day. They later indicated which intentions were completed with and without the use of reminders. Consistent with prior research, high working memory participants did better in both laboratory and naturalistic settings when having to rely on their own memory. Critically, however, working memory ability was no longer predictive of performance with the use of reminders. Participants with lower working memory also offloaded more often that high ability participants, but this was not optimally calibrated to actual PM performance. These findings suggest that offloading may be particularly beneficial for those with poor cognitive ability. The theoretical and applied ramifications of these findings are discussed.

From experiment to real-life data

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Surkyn ◽  
Reinhild Vandekerckhove ◽  
Dominiek Sandra
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Online Chat ◽  
Processing Level ◽  
Automatic Retrieval ◽  
The Social

Abstract We examine unintentional spelling errors on verb homophones in informal online chat conversations of Flemish adolescents. In experiments, these verb forms yielded an effect of homophone dominance, i.e., most errors occurred on the lower-frequency form (Sandra et al., 1999). Verb homophones are argued to require the conscious application of a spelling rule, which may cause a temporary overload of working memory resources and trigger automatic retrieval of the higher-frequency spelling from the mental lexicon. Unlike most previous research, we investigate homophone intrusions in a natural writing context. Thus, we test the ‘ecological validity’ of psycholinguistic experiments. Importantly, this study relates these psycholinguistic constructs to different social variables in social media writing to test a prediction that directly follows from Sandra et al.’s account. Whereas social factors likely affect the error rates, they should not affect the error pattern: the number of working memory failures occurs at another processing level than the homophone intrusions. Hence, the focus is on the interaction between homophone dominance and the social variables. The errors for two types of verb homophones reveal (a) an impact of all social variables, (b) an effect of homophone dominance, and (c) no interaction between this effect and the social factors.

scholarly journals Working memory training in older adults: COMT Val158Met modulates the transfer of benefits in a virtual reality working memory task

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (S10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnaud Boujut ◽  
Samira Mellah ◽  
Lynn Valeyry Verty ◽  
Samantha Maltezos ◽  
Maxime Lussier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Working Memory Training ◽  
Memory Training ◽  
Comt Val158met

scholarly journals Day-to-Day Contact and Help Among Neighbors Measured in the Natural Environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Seifert
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Positive Valence ◽  
Design And Methods

Abstract Background and Objectives Empirical evidence suggests that the concept of “neighboring” (i.e., social contact and social support within a neighborhood) is related to between-person differences in well-being among older adults. However, little is known about the within-person differences in older adults’ everyday lives, which limits the ecological validity of prior findings. This study examined within-person associations between neighboring and the existence of positive valence, loneliness, and attachment to one’s neighborhood. Research Design and Methods The sample consisted of 4,620 observations of 20 days, drawn from 77 adults aged between 61 and 90 years. A mobile application on a smartphone was used for data collection. Results The results of the multilevel analysis suggest that daily contact with one’s neighbors was not significantly associated with daily positive valence, but it was positively related to daily feelings of not being alone and daily attachment to one’s neighborhood. Discussion and Implications The study makes noteworthy contributions to the field of gerontology by applying a micro-longitudinal research design to assess real-life within-person information.

CAN IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL REALITY TRAVEL EXPERIENCE REPLACE REAL TRAVEL?

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Jacek Polechoński ◽  
Rajmund Tomik
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Real World ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Computer Applications ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Immersive Virtual Reality ◽  
Travel Experience ◽  
Virtual Tourism

Purpose. The study attempts to define virtual reality in tourism as well as to characterise and present chosen applications created for the purposes of virtual sightseeing. Based on the survey conducted among tourism and recreation students of the Jerzy Kukuczka Academy of Physical Education in Katowice, the study attempts to answer the provocative question: “can virtual tourism replace real-world travel?”, and to analyse participants’ opinions on the topic of virtual trips. Methods. Analysis of scientific studies as well as information and data on the possibility of using immersive virtual reality in human life with particular consideration given to tourism. An overview of applications enabling taking trips through immersive exploration of virtual environments. The survey was conducted among AWF students. Participants expressed their opinions about virtual sightseeing. Findings. Virtual reality is increasingly used in various fields of human life. It is entering the world of tourism, in which it is used to create presentations of hotels and resorts, and to promote towns and tourist facilities. Appropriate software and IT equipment allow to take deliberate, planned and very realistic virtual trips. The authors of the work defined such tourism as all activities carried out by persons who immerse themselves in virtual reality for learning and entertainment purposes in order to experience the illusion of change of their everyday, real surroundings in time and space. Tourism understood in such a way allows us not only to go to almost any place without the necessity of leaving home. It also allows for visiting areas and objects which cannot be explored in real life. It enables a visitor, among others, to travel in space and visit historical sites which no longer exist in their original form, but have been recreated in computer applications. Virtual tourism also allows for exploring fictional locations created by designers of photorealistic graphics as well as valuable and sensitive monuments, and taking trips to places which are dangerous or prohibited. In the conducted survey, it has been concluded that even though tourism and recreation students found experience with virtual reality to be positive, the majority is not convinced that this form of tourism can replace real-world travel. Research and conclusions limitations. There are only a few publications concerning immersive virtual reality travel experience. Access to the software was quite early. Practical implications. Understanding and reorganisation of issues related to immersive virtual reality travel experience. The study may constitute an original introduction and encouragement to carry out qualitative and quantitative research on newly created virtual tourism. Originality. An original concept of understanding virtual tourism was presented. Type of paper. Empirical research and review.

A comparison of immersive virtual reality with traditional neuropsychological measures in the assessment of executive functions

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Melissa Clare Davison ◽  
Catherine Deeprose ◽  
Sylvia Terbeck
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Real World ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Immersive Virtual Reality ◽  
Neuropsychological Measures ◽  
Seating Arrangement ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Initial Work ◽  
Neuropsychological Tasks

ObjectiveThis study investigated immersive virtual reality (IVR), as a novel technique to test executive function of healthy younger and older adults. We predicted IVR tasks to have greater predictive power than traditional measures when assessing age-related cognitive functioning due to the real-world validity of the tasks.MethodsParticipants (n=40) completed the Stroop colour–word test and the trail-making test (TMT) as traditional and commonly used assessments of executive functioning. Participants then completed three IVR tasks; a seating arrangement task, an item location task (both set in a virtual chemistry lab), and a virtual parking simulator.ResultsYounger adults completed significantly more parking simulator levels (p<0.001), placed significantly more objects (p<0.001), and located significantly more items than older adults (p<0.01), demonstrating higher levels of performance. Significant correlations were found between performance on traditional neuropsychological measures and IVR measures. For example, Stroop CW performance significantly correlated with the number of parking simulator levels completed (τ=0.43, p<0.01). This suggests that IVR measures assess the same underlying cognitive constructs as traditional tasks. In addition, IVR measures contributed a significant percentage of the explained variance in age.ConclusionIVR measures (i.e. number of parking simulator levels completed and number of objects placed in the seating arrangement task) were found to be stronger contributors than existing traditional neuropsychological tasks in predicting age-related cognitive decline. Future research should investigate the implementation of these real-world-based tasks in clinical groups given this promising initial work.

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