Abstract:  Executive function reflects an individual’s ability to regulate and introspect on his/her cognitive processes. The assessment of executive function plays an important role in the evaluation of cognitive development in children and cognitive impairment in special groups. Although assessment of executive function has been studied and developed since the early 20th century, traditional measuring tools remain unsatisfactory in many aspects such as poor ecological validity and uncontrollable environments and participants’ arousal levels. Virtual reality (VR) technology demonstrated remarkable advantages in generating high ecological validity testing scenario with limited cost and has been developed very fast in recent years. This paper reviews recent progress in applying VR to the assessment of executive function and discusses the future trends in improving VR-based executive function assessments.

Key words:  executive function, virtual reality, neuropsychological assessment, ecological validity