Assessing everyday life functional activity using actual reality in persons with MS

Area of Science:

• Rehabilitation Research
• Neuroscience
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Multiple sclerosis (MS) significantly impacts daily life activities, yet assessing functional performance remains challenging.
• Existing methods struggle to capture the real-world functional deficits experienced by individuals with MS.
• The Actual Reality (AR) assessment was developed to provide a performance-based measure of everyday activities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish the validity and reliability of the Actual Reality (AR) assessment for measuring functional cognition in adults with MS.
• To determine if AR tasks can differentiate between individuals with MS and healthy controls.
• To explore the associations between AR performance and traditional neuropsychological measures.

Main Methods:

• A repeated measures design was employed with 30 adults with MS and 30 healthy controls (HC).
• Participants completed three internet-based AR tasks (airline ticket, cookie, pizza purchase) twice, with a 3-week interval.
• Neuropsychological tests and self-report questionnaires were administered concurrently.

Main Results:

• The AR assessment demonstrated moderate to large interrater reliability.
• Participants with MS made more errors and required more cues than HC, supporting discriminant validity.
• Concurrent validity was supported by moderate to large correlations between AR performance and neuropsychological test scores.
• Practice effects were observed for cognitive processes and task completion time.

Conclusions:

• The Actual Reality (AR) assessment provides a valid and reliable method for measuring functional cognition in real-world contexts.
• AR can effectively identify functional deficits in individuals with MS compared to healthy controls.
• Researchers should consider the observed practice effects when utilizing AR for cognitive assessments.