Quantifying ADHD Symptoms in Open-Ended Everyday Life Contexts With a New Virtual Reality Task

To quantify goal-directed behavior and ADHD symptoms in naturalistic conditions, we developed a virtual reality task, EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving), and tested its predictive, discriminant and concurrent validity.

We collected EPELI data, conventional neuropsychological task data, and parent-ratings of executive problems and symptoms in 38 ADHD children and 38 typically developing controls.

EPELI showed predictive validity as the ADHD group exhibited higher percentage of irrelevant actions reflecting lower attentional-executive efficacy and more controller movements and total game actions, both indicative of hyperactivity-impulsivity. Further, the five combined EPELI measures showed excellent discriminant validity (area under curve 88 %), while the correlations of the EPELI efficacy measure with parent-rated executive problems (r = .57) and ADHD symptoms (r = .55) pointed to its concurrent validity.

We provide a proof-of-concept validation for a new virtual reality tool for ecologically valid assessment of ADHD symptoms.