Article

People with schizophrenia often have functional limitations that affect their
daily activities due to executive function deficits. One way to assess these
deficits is through the use of virtual reality programmes that reproduce
real-life instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). One such programme is
the Virtual Action Planning-Supermarket (VAP-S). This exploratory study aimed to
examine the ecological validity of this programme, specifically, how task
performance in both virtual and natural environments compares. Case studies were
used and involved five participants with schizophrenia, who were familiar with
grocery shopping. They were assessed during both the VAP-S shopping task and a
real-life grocery shopping task using an observational assessment tool, the
Perceive, Recall, Plan and Perform (PRPP) System of Task Analysis. The results
show that when difficulties were present in the virtual task, difficulties were
also observed in the real-life task. For some participants, greater difficulties
were observed in the virtual task. These difficulties could be explained by the
presence of perceptual deficits and problems remembering the required sequenced
actions in the virtual task. In conclusion, performance on the VAP-S by these
five participants was generally comparable to the performance in a natural
environment.

Langue : ANGLAIS