UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal

The Flanker task is a neuropsychological test designed to measure inhibitory control–the ability to ignore automatic responses in order to reach higher goals. The traditional, tablet form of the Flanker task is widely used and well-cited. Recently, the UCR Brain Game Center has developed a Virtual Reality (VR) Flanker game. After the project is created, the next step is to validate its usefulness with a pilot study, which is the focus of this research paper. This pilot study addressed two central research questions. The first research question was: would the newly developed VR Flanker task measure inhibitory control as well as the traditional, tablet Flanker task? In Pilot Study 1, participants were first randomly assigned to either the VR or computer form of the Flanker task, and then utilized the alternative platform in the second session. The second research question was: would different versions of the VR Flanker task yield different measurements of inhibitory control? In Pilot Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to either the Regular VR Flanker task or the Jitter VR Flanker task during the first session. The second session employed the version that participants were not assigned to in the previous session. The study compared the standard performance measure of the difference in reaction time between congruent and incongruent tasks (Flanker effect) in both Pilot studies. The results demonstrate that VR Flanker tasks are a valid way to measure inhibitory control. Pilot 1 found that Flanker effects produced in the tablet and VR Flanker tasks are similar, while Pilot 2 found that greater Flanker effects could be produced with a different presentation of stimuli in the virtual environment. Once it is established that the VR task measures inhibitory control as well as the tablet version, there would be multiple benefits for neurological tools and testing in different populations. The advantage of a VR Flanker game is that it can serve both as a fun method to assess Flanker effects and as a training tool. Long-term use of a validated VR Flanker task could allow us to emulate real-world situations and lead us to better understand populations struggling with inhibitory control.