Abstract: The balance issue of experiment control and ecological validity in traditional neuropsychological assessment is a growing concern for researchers. The emerging virtual reality (VR) technology brings the hope to improve this problem. It may not only imitate the real world and support the interactions between subjects and environments, but also can reproduce and extend the traditional tests. The VR assessment systems have more flexibility to control the contents and presentations of stimulus, the task complexity and the subjects’ responses and the final information acquisition is more accurate. Its initial applications have encouraging results on attention process (attention, unilateral visual neglect), memory (prospective memory, episodic memory, spatial memory, topographical orientation) and executive function. However, the up-to-date applications of VR assessments are still affected by the deficient technologies and instruments and have limitations on demanding the operation experiences of examiners and subjects. In order to push the extended application, standardization of the existing VR assessment systems and further development of basic conditions will be the aims of the future researches.

Key words: virtual reality, neuropsychological assessment, attention process, memory, executive function