A Pilot Study on Interactive Multisensory Environments for Neuropsychological Assessment

Measuring cognitive functions is a complex and challenging process, and researchers usually conduct their study in experimental settings and with standardized tests. Such an approach is raising more and more criticism. Especially about the capability of psychology's laboratory experiments to provide generalizable and accurate indicators of impairments outside the laboratory boundaries in everyday life. This is acknowledged as the "real-world or lab" dilemma. Most tests traditionally performed using paper-and-pencil may fail to detect the individual's difficulties in the real world. The scientific community has launched a quest for new digitized, interactive, and more "ecological" versions. Our work investigates a novel approach to this topic that exploits interactive Multi-Sensory Environments (iMSE) and questions how iMSEs could contribute to the neuropsychology assessment field. The paper describes NEP-Neuro-Psychological Suite, a set of game-based activities in iMSE inspired by widely adopted neuropsychological tests. The suite provides a context in which existing or new neuropsychological tests can be experimented, extended, and modified with stimuli, contents, and tasks closer to real-world situations. We report an exploratory empirical study (N=22) on a well-known test to assess attention skills, the Stroop Test. The results, although very preliminary, provide insights into the effects of transposing classic tests into a novel form and the role that iMSEs can play in the debate about the "real-world or lab" dilemma.