BACKGROUND
In neuropsychology, fully-immersive virtual reality has been spotlighted as a promising tool. It is considered that not only overcome existing limitation of neuropsychological tests, but also appropriate for treating executive functions within daily living tasks due to its high ecological validity. While fully-immersive virtual reality offers the new possibilities of neuropsychological tests, there are only few studies that use fully-immersive virtual reality to mainly targeted executive functions.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study is to overview the research trends that use virtual reality in neuropsychological tests and to analyze the research trends using fully-immersive virtual reality neuropsychological tests with experimental articles.
METHODS
This review was carried out according to PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) guidelines. Articles were searched in three web databases using the keywords related to virtual reality, executive functions, and cognitive abilities and publishing year were limited from 2000 to 2019. Studies were divided into two categories: keyword analysis and descriptive analysis.
RESULTS
: From the web database searching, 1167 articles were collected initially. A total of 47 articles were included for descriptive analysis, and 234 articles in eligibility phase was used to conduct keyword analysis. In keyword analysis, it is conducted to overview the research trends about target cognitive abilities, target symptoms, and behavioral and physiological data. In descriptive analysis, final included articles were analyzed with its purpose of study, target cognitive abilities and virtual environments, and their participants to look the trends more deeply.
CONCLUSIONS
There has been a continuously increased interest in dealing with neuropsychology by using fully-immersive virtual reality. Target cognitive abilities were diversified, as well as target symptoms. Moreover, the concept of embodied cognition was transplanted in this research area.