The Virtual Supermarket performs tests in NEMO

Image of the test performed with the Virtual Supermarket during NEMO Science Live
Image of the test performed with the Virtual Supermarket during NEMO Science Live

In the second half of October, researchers tested The Virtual Supermarket, a virtual reality game in which participants must complete several shopping tasks to test their cognitive functions. Approximately 300 people took place in the experiments during NEMO Science Live. "We designed a virtual supermarket in which we ask our participants to shop a list of products," the researchers explained. "We measure for example the number of correctly found products and the amount of time needed to find all products and go to the pay desk, but we also test navigation-skills by measuring several way-finding variables and visual search efficiency by measuring eye movements." Results from this tests will be compared with the usual "pen-and-paper tests" to investigate the relation between the two.

Cognitive functions

Assessment of cognitive functions generally encompasses multiple pen-and-paper tests for several different cognitive domains (attention, perception, memory, executive functioning, etc). However, the environments in which people use their cognitive functions are generally completely different from the settings in which such cognitive assessment takes place. "Additionally to the shopping task in the VR supermarket, we also asked our participants to perform a few cognitive pen-and-paper tests," said the researchers. "We can now investigate the relation between those two types of assessment, but we will also scrutinise eye movement data for different types of search efficiency measures."

The Virtual Supermarket is a project by Dr. Tanja Nijboer (Department of Experimental Psychology), Prof. Dr. Anne Visser-Meily (Department of Rehabilitation Medicine), Floor Verheul (Rehabilitation Physician (i.o.) De Hoogstraat Revalidatie), Dr. Hans Bouwknegt (Atoms2Bits) and Lauriane Spreij (Department of Rehabilitation Medicine). This project is partially supported by Game Research Seed Money. This research was part of Science Live, the innovative research programme of NEMO Science Museum that enables scientists to carry out real, publishable, peer-reviewed research using NEMO visitors as volunteers.​

Image of the team that performed the tests.
A photograph of the team members who performed the tests