Full length article ClinicaVR: Classroom-CPT: A virtual reality tool for assessing attention and inhibition in children and adolescents Pierre Nolin a, * , Annie Stipanicic a , Myl  ene Henry a , Yves Lachapelle a , Dany Lussier-Desrochers a , Albert “Skip” Rizzo b , Philippe Allain c a Laboratoire de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en R ealit e Virtuelle (LARI-RV) et Chaire de Recherche sur les Technologies de Soutien  a l'Autod etermination (Chaire TSA), Universit e du Qu ebec  a Trois-Rivi eres, Qu ebec, Canada b Institute for Creative Technologies, Department of Psychiatry and School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Playa Vista, CA, USA c Universit e d'Angers, LUNAM, Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire, EA 4638, Angers, France article info Article history: Received 15 July 2015 Received in revised form 4 February 2016 Accepted 6 February 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: ClinicaVR Classroom-CPT Inhibition Validity Reliability Children Virtual reality Virtual classroom abstract Having garnered interest both in clinic and research areas, the Virtual Classroom (Rizzo et al., 2000) assesses children's attention in a virtual context. The Digital MediaWorks team (www.dmw.ca) has evolved the original basic classroom concept over a number of iterations to form the ClinicaVR Suite containing the Classroom-CPT as one of its components. The present study has three aims: investigate certain validity and reliability aspects of the tool; examine the relationship between performance in the virtual test and the attendant sense of presence and cybersickness experienced by participants; assess potential effects of gender and age on performance in the test. The study was conducted with 102 children and adolescents from Grade 2 to Grade 10. All participants were enrolled in a regular school program. Results support both concurrent and construct validity as well as temporal stability of Clin- icaVR: Classroom-Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Gender exerted no effect on performance, while age did. The test did not cause much cybersickness. We recommend ClinicaVR: Classroom-CPT as an assessment tool for selective and sustained attention, and inhibition, in clinic and research domains. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Through traditional neuropsychological assessment (Lezak, Howieson, Loring, Hannay, & Fischer, 2004), it is possible to bet- ter understand people's neurocognitive abilities and problems. It provides clinicians with a basis for developing diagnoses and rehabilitation strategies for a variety of populations. However, its ecological validity has been questioned (Bowman,1996; Marcotte & Grant, 2010; Sbordone & Long, 1996; van der Linden, 2008a, 2008b). Critics claim that neuropsychological tests do not predict people's daily functioning very well, and that this effect is espe- cially important when results fall within the normal range or when they indicate mild deficits (Sbordone, 2008). Then, limited ecological validity of traditional neuropsychological testing represents one of its main drawback. The ecological approach to neuropsychological testing was first developed in the late 1980s as an attempt by researchers and cli- nicians to improve the quality of traditional testing. In this approach, emphasis is placed on the test's ability to be represen- tative of people's functioning in everyday situations (Chaytor & Schmitter-Edgecombe, 2003). From this perspective, virtual re- ality techniques hold promise for researchers and clinicians (Allain et al., 2011; Jovanovski et al., 2012; Parsons, Carlew, & Sullivan, 2015; Rizzo, Buckwalter, & Zaag, 2002; Rizzo, Schultheis, Kerns, & Mateer, 2004; Schultheis, Himelstein, & Rizzo, 2002). Through this technology, users navigate and interact within three- dimensional environments. The term “ecological” applies to vir- tual reality because virtual environments can simulate everyday environments (e.g. a classroom) and require the user to display behaviours that are necessary in real life. By nature, tests conducted through virtual reality are better than traditional tests at detecting problems experienced by users in daily situations; they do not suffer from some methodological flaws that would exist in un- controlled assessments conducted in real-life environments (e.g. * Corresponding author. Laboratoire de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en R ealit e Virtuelle, D epartement de psycho education, Universit e du Qu ebec  a Trois-Rivi eres, C.P. 500, Trois-Rivi eres, Qu ebec, G9A 5H7, Canada. E-mail address: pierre.nolin@uqtr.ca (P. Nolin). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.023 0747-5632/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Computers in Human Behavior 59 (2016) 327e333