1. Introduction
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent attentional problems, difficulty in controlling impulses, and hyperactivity [
1]. It affects between 5% and 13% of children [
2,
3], interfering in their school and family adaptation. After adolescence, impulsivity symptoms tend to diminish [
4], but it is estimated that ADHD continues to affect between 40% and 70% of those cases [
5], and that it continues to interfere in social and labor adaptation [
6,
7]. A previous study showed that people who reported having ADHD symptoms in childhood not only generally had a lower educational level, but were also more likely to be unemployed, abuse drugs, or be imprisoned [
8].
Previous neuroimaging studies suggested that people with ADHD show reduced activation, compared to controls, in right lateral prefrontal cortex regions when performing go/no go tasks. This suggests that a deficit in executive function (EF) gives rise to the behavioral symptoms of ADHD [
9]. EF includes functions such as monitoring and actualizing information in working memory, inhibiting undesired responses or avoiding paying attention to irrelevant stimuli, and shifting attention between activities [
10,
11]. There are a wide variety of continuous performance tests (CPT) aimed at children and adolescents that have been shown to be reliable, valid instruments in the diagnosis of ADHD. These tests provide quantitative data on different variables of interest that have been shown to be related to ADHD symptoms [
12,
13,
14]. The most common variables provided by CPT are the following:
Correct responses: the sum of the participant’s correct responses, considered as a measure of working memory due to the high cognitive load involved in responding simultaneously in the two sensory modalities with varying instructions.
Omission errors: the sum of the participant´s errors, failing to press the button when they were supposed to press it, considered an indicator of attentional arousal in situations of high cognitive load for working memory.
Commission errors: the sum of the participant´s errors, pressing the button when they were not supposed to press it, considered an indicator of impulsivity.
Reaction time: the average time the participant took to press the button once the target stimuli was presented, considered an indicator of processing speed.
Variability of reaction time: the difference between the fastest reaction time and slowest reaction time registered in the test. This measure is indicative of changes in sustained attention or fatigability during the task.
Conversely, in the case of the adult population, various studies have noted the existence of underdiagnoses of ADHD. The main reason is due to the absence of CPTs or other objective tools (based on patient performance) which allow assessment of possible ADHD cases in adolescence and more especially in adulthood. Both late adolescence and adulthood require more complex testing and assessment protocols because of the presence of comorbid psychiatric disorders.
Considering the complexity of diagnosing ADHD in adulthood or late adolescence, it is important to have adequate objective tests. Most current tests demonstrate poor ecological validity and are administered in unrealistic conditions that might generate extraneous variance depending on the many ways subjects adapt to these conditions [
15]. Another more frequently used option are observation scales, which might be more sensitive to how EFs are used in real life [
9], although they might be biased by the respondents’ subjectivity [
15,
16].
It is important to develop reliable, ecologically valid measures for measuring ADHD symptoms and the incorporation of virtual reality (VR) is a promising approach [
15]. While maintaining the objectivity of typical performance tests, VR tests reduce the extraneous variance associated with the artificiality of the test conditions because participants are immersed in a realistic environment. Recent studies showed that VR tests of EF were useful for exploring the differences between children with ADHD and controls, as well as in different ADHD presentations [
16]. However, in adults, although different EF VR tests have been validated [
17], their effectiveness in predicting ADHD symptoms has not yet been established.
This study aims to explore whether a validated VR test called Nesplora Aquarium [
18] is able to predict ADHD symptoms in adults and adolescents, based on both current and retrospective self-reports. Nesplora Aquarium is a VR-CPT designed to measure EF in adolescents and adults. Participants wear three-dimensional glasses equipped with sensors and headphones and are “immersed” in a virtual aquarium. Then, following the go/no-go paradigm, they perform the following tasks: (1) Learning task training 1/Learning task 1: This task consists of an AX (go task) or 1-back paradigm; the button must be pressed whenever the person sees a clownfish or hears the word “clownfish”, if the previous fish or word has been a surgeon. (2) Task 1 (Dual execution-Xno training/Dual execution-Xno task): This is a Dual X_no or Dual No_go task. The person must press the button whenever a fish appears or a word is heard except when seeing the Clownfish or hearing the word “surgeon”. (3) Task 2 (Dual execution-Inversion of the target stimuli in Dual execution-Xno task): This is a Dual X_no or Dual No_go task. The person must press the button whenever a fish appears or a word is heard except when seeing the surgeon or hearing the word “clownfish”. In this sense, through the inversion of the target stimuli it is possible to evaluate the control of interference by both switching capacity (cost of task change) and perseveration errors.
Each of these tasks is composed of 140 evaluation items and 20 training items, but only the evaluation items of the final two tasks are considered in the analysis. The objective of the first task is to produce fatigue and ensure learning of the stimuli. The whole test takes about 20 min. Once the tasks are finished, the new VR test not only provides the aforementioned variables (correct responses, omissions, commissions, response time, and variability), but also provides data on two new important variables: (1) switching: the difference between the participant´s correct responses in the last part of a task and the beginning of the next task, considered an indicator of the capacity to shift attention; and (2) perseveration errors: the errors registered in the dual execution tasks, when subjects respond to the task by following the instruction of the previous task. This variable is interpreted as deficit in cognitive flexibility.
Given the potential benefits of using VR tools that provide different variables related to attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity problems, it is likely that VR variables will be significant predictors of current and retrospective ADHD symptoms.
This objective would have significant practical implications in the diagnosis of ADHD in adolescence and adulthood. If a VR test was able to predict a high percentage of retrospective patient symptoms, VR variables could be used as a good indicator for determining whether ADHD symptomatology had been present throughout a patient’s life.