Virtual School Environments For Neuropsychological Assessment And Training

The virtual school environment has been developed and validated by the Computational Neuropsychology and Simulation (CNS) Laboratory of Dr. Thomas Parsons. The overarching goal of the virtual school project is to provide neuropsychological, affective, and social cognitive assessments that are more meaningful for the lives of children. These previously developed and validated virtual reality (VR) simulations of various contexts within the school environment (e.g., classroom, hallway, playground) can be combined and harnessed to gain ecologically valid assessments of children in real-world situations. The virtual school environment generates synthetic surroundings, including a virtual classroom, hallway, and playground via a 360-degree immersive experience. Furthermore, the computational design and administration of the virtual school environment platform allows for simultaneous recording of the child's behavioral and physiological responses. Virtual environments can be used to offer traditional psychometric testing and can collect additional real-time data (e.g., head movements, limb movements that reflect distraction). As such, they have potential to provide greater diagnostic specificity and more useful targets for intervention.