Assessment of Attentional and Mnesic Processes Through Gaze Tracking Analysis: Inferences from Comparative Search Tasks Embedded in VR Serious Games

The impairment of basic cognitive functions such as attention and visual working memory can have a significant negative impact in our ability to adapt to the permanent changes in the environment. VR Serious Games are being used as a new tool for both assessment, stimulation and rehabilitation of such impaired functions. Even though the results of these novel applications seem to be promising, some of the assessments based in these solutions use indirect measures to evaluate attentional and mnesic performance (e.g. number of errors, task completion time). Gaze tracking (GT) can provide more accurate and direct indicators of these cognitive processes. On a sample of 46 non-clinical participants (33 Female; 71.7%), with an age average of 27.96 years old (SD = 11.92), ocular movements were recorded in two different comparative visual search tasks (CVSTs) that are an integrant part of the cognitive assessment protocol of the Systemic Lisbon Battery (SLB). Number of visits and total fixations differed based on the assessment with the Mini-mental state examination test (MMSE). These results highlight the possibility of combining both the data from the GT and the results of the “spot the differences” tasks in SLB, adding an unobtrusive and reliable solution for cognitive assessment in clinical and non-clinical settings.