Joint Attention Virtual Classroom: A Preliminary Study.

Objective: Previous studies have suggested that a virtual classroom is immersive and ecologically valid neuropsychological assessment, but those studies have limited components for social attentions. Therefore, the objective in the current study is the development of a joint attention virtual reality (JA-VR) classroom to incorporate social attentions between a participant and a virtual avatar teacher.

Methods: Fifty-eight participants were recruited for current study (25 for pilot and 33 for main studies; 32.8% female, n=19; age: M=24.5, SD=4.0). We suggested a JA-VR classroom, and compared it with previous methods including a VR classroom without JA components. We conducted attention experiments with AX-version of continuous performance tasks.

Results: Our results suggest that the new JA-VR classroom had convergent validity with previous methods, and that the JA-VR classroom promoted attentional processing among participants better than both old VR and non-VR measures.

Conclusion: We add an important social attention concept to the virtual classroom, and believe that this work is an methodological foundation for the study of social attention in school life. We hope it ultimately help people with mental handicaps in social attention.