In psychology and neuroscience, memory span is the longest list of items that a person can repeat back in correct order immediately after presentation on 50% of all trials. 

The span memory task had the goal improving the length of the longest list of items that a person could handle.

Brainstorming

The HTC Vive has 2 controllers each with a trigger easily reached by your index finger. As a fan of the FPS VR game “The Brookhaven Experiment” the idea of combining an FPS game with VR seemed natural based on prior experience with games and the controllers we would be using. Selecting the cognitive task came from my experience with a span memory game the Brain Game Center had created as part of a research study. The simplicity of the span memory task would work given the limited time we had to create the game.

Mind

The challenge/difficulty of the game was decided by the users. If they wanted to test their memory by adding more cartridges to the magazine it was up to them. Scoring encouraged users to challenge themselves by deducting points per reload. So the more cartridges loaded at once the fewer times they would need to reload and therefore a higher score would be earned. By attempting to keep users around their spam memory load limit this would ideally lead to an improvement and increase their load limit over time.

​Body

Utilizing the full VR environment allowed us engage the user’s body by forcing them to walk and turn in order to complete the task.

  -  Possible future developments could include obstructions in front of targets to increase user movement.

  -  Switching an item between your left or right hand was allowed by using the trigger on the “empty” hand within proximity of the selectable item without needing to set it down or adjust settings via game menu