A Novel Approach for Assessing Prospective Memory Using Immersive Virtual Reality Task

Abstract

Prospective memory can maintain our ability to living independently and is important for our daily lives. Evaluation of prospective memory can reflect the severity of cognitive ability regression. Previous studies have developed slide based task and real-life based task to evaluate prospective memory capability in different conditions. As a new technology that can create a realistic test environment, immersive virtual reality (VR) has not yet been widely used in this area. We developed a real-life test environment using the immersive VR technology and asked the subjects to perform common shopping task in it. By comparing the results with the ones from slide-based task, we have demonstrated that immersive VR task has the potential to evaluate perspective memory more accurately in daily life condition.