Ricerc@Sapienza

Efficient, objective measures of mild functional difficulties are lacking. Literature suggests that performance-based assessment is accurate and reliable. The Natural Action Test is one of the performance-based task able to evaluate cognitive functions using daily live activities. Despite their validity, objectivity, and potential for rich characterizations of functional difficulties, performance-based measures have not been widely adopted in clinics or research studies due to one major drawback - they generally require extraordinary effort to administer and score. Preliminary data from novel, non-immersive virtual reality, performance-based tasks based on the NAT has been obtained to address this gap by Giovannetti et al. (2018), but at this moment there is a lack of a full immersive Virtual Reality performance-based task.
A cross-over trial will test the Naturalistic Action Test and its immersive Virtual Reality performance-based task (VRAT) in three group of subjects, 12 younger, 12 older adults and 12 older adults with MCI.
Participants will complete a cognitive testing and an everyday task in two different conditions: a full immersive Virtual Environment; and with real objects (order counterbalanced). Automated performance measures will be obtained from the VRAT and human coders will score VRAT and NAT for errors and correlations.
Hypothesis of the study is that VRAT and NAT will be related in terms of specificity and their ability to assess cognitive functions and daily living activities. We expect also that older adults will make more errors than younger adults on the VRAT and NAT, with similar error patterns across measures.
Conclusion: The aim of the project is to firstly contribute to the development of a Virtual parallel form of the NAT, evaluating its feasibility within the context of MCI, as a valid and highly efficient performance-based measure of subtle functional difficulties with great potential for future clinical and research applications.