Give it another shot: Virtual Reality as a tool for assessing shooting performance under varying cognitive loads

The soldiers, sometimes exposed to situations of cognitive overload where errors can be fatal, constitute a population that can greatly benefit from cognitive training. The effects of such training are rarely studied in real-life situations due to the associated costs and risks, threatening their external validity. In this context, virtual reality emerges as an indispensable alternative as it allows the study of human behavior in realistic and dynamic environments capable of imposing a significant cognitive load. The concept of cognitive load is fundamental in performance assessment as it is strongly linked to performance and the risk of error.

The objective of this research was to develop a program for evaluating shooting performance based on the imposed cognitive load. To achieve this, we created a series of virtual environments where the participant’s task was to shoot as accurately and quickly as possible at series of targets while performing secondary tasks imposing variable cognitive loads (low vs. high). The perceived cognitive load by the participants was measured using the NASA-TLX questionnaire.