Neuropsychological Assessment 3.0

Abstract

This chapter presents an evolution of computerized neuropsychological assessment devices that include simulation technologies. Neuropsychological Assessment 3.0 reflects the enhanced computational capacities that have emerged and their potential for extending administration efficiency, stimulus presentation, automated logging of responses, and data analytic processing. Moreover, virtual environments can provide ecologically valid assessments that combine the veridical control and rigor of laboratory measures with a verisimilitude that reflects real-life situations. The chapter includes a description of limitations that have historically hampered the adoption of virtual environments. For example, early virtual environment hardware was large and unwieldy, difficult to operate, and very expensive to develop and maintain. Over the past decade, researchers have steadily progressed in making this hardware and software more reliable, cost-effective, and acceptable in terms of size and appearance. The VEs of today are advanced computer interfaces that allow patients to become immersed within a computer-generated simulation of everyday activities. There is also review of ecological validity concerns that may be alleviated by virtual reality-based assessments. Given recent updates to the ecological validity discussion in terms of the need for function-led approaches, both construct-driven and function-led virtual environments are presented. Examples of virtual environments for assessment of executive functioning, attentional processing, memory, and affect are described.

For a variety of reasons clinical neuropsychology has been slow to embrace techniques like computer and virtual-based methods that may have much greater application in detecting subtle impairments, including those associated with mTBI.

—Erin D. Bigler (2013)