adfa, p. 1, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 A Virtual Reality Environment for Prospective Memory Training Antonija Mitrovic 1,* , Moffat Mathews 1 , Stellan Ohlsson 2 , Jay Holland 1 , Audrey McKinlay 3 , Scott Ogden 1 , Anthony Bracegirdle 1 , Sam Dopping-Hepenstal 1 1 Intelligent Computer Tutoring Group, University of Canterbury, New Zealand tanja.mitrovic@canterbury.ac.nz 2 Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago 3 Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne Abstract. Prospective Memory (PM), or remembering to perform tasks in the future, is of crucial importance for everyday life. Stroke survivors often have impaired prospective memory, which can interfere with their independent liv- ing. In 2011, we started working on computer-based training for improving pro- spective memory in stroke patients. The primary goal of our project is to devel- op an effective PM treatment that could be used without the input of clinicians. Our approach combines the use of visual imagery with practice in a Virtual Re- ality (VR) environment. In this paper, we present the VR environment and the user modelling approach implemented. Keywords: prospective memory training, virtual reality environment, con- straint-based modeling, 1 Introduction People with brain injury (including stroke) have severely impaired prospective memory in comparison to healthy people [1, 2]. Prospective memory, or remembering to perform actions in the future, is of crucial importance for everyday life [3]. Pro- spective memory failure can interfere with independent living, as it can result in for- getting to take medication, switch off the stove or missing doctor’s appointments. It is a complex cognitive ability, which requires coordination of multiple cognitive abili- ties: spatial navigation, retrospective memory, attention and executive functioning [4]. There are two critical aspects of PM: it is closely related to retrospective memory (remembering what was learnt and experienced previously), as it is necessary to know what the task is in order to actually perform the task. The other aspect is the retrieval of the intention at the time appropriate for the action. There is a distinction between event- and time-based prospective tasks. In the case of a time-based task, a certain action needs to be performed at a certain time (e.g. having a doctor’s appointment at 4pm). In event-based tasks, an action needs to be performed when a certain event happens (like asking a friend a question when we see them next time). Prospective memory is very difficult to assess using neuropsychological tests as conventional tests consist of simple, abstracted activities that are very different from real-world tasks. In the last decade, many research projects have used Virtual Reality