“The Jansari assessment of Executive Functions (JEF©): A new ecologically-valid tool for assessing EFs using virtual reality.” Invited talk by Dr. Ashok Jansari, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
The Jansari Assessment of Executive Functions (JEF) is a novel tool designed to evaluate executive functions (EFs) more accurately and ecologically in individuals with various conditions, including acquired brain injury (ABI), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, substance addiction, dyslexia, developmental coordination difficulty, and previous head injuries. It operates through virtual reality, simulating a business office environment where participants perform tasks resembling real-life challenges. JEF assesses eight EF constructs: Planning, Prioritization, Selective-Thinking, Creative- Thinking, Adaptive-Thinking, and three types of Prospective Memory (PM). Studies have demonstrated JEF’s superior sensitivity compared to traditional clinical tests, showing its ability to detect EF differences between healthy individuals and various clinical groups. Additionally, it correlates well with subjective self-report measures. JEF is considered safe and ecologically valid, offering potential as a standard EF assessment tool and aiding in targeted rehabilitation. Versions for adolescents and children are available, and it has been translated into multiple languages, being utilized by clinicians worldwide for both research and clinical purposes.
About the Guest Speaker: Dr. Jansari is a cognitive neuropsychologist with over 30 years of experience in the field having trained at King’s College Cambridge, Sussex University and the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. In his research he studies everyday mental functions such as memory, executive functions and face-recognition by studying individuals who have profound difficulties in these abilities that we take for granted resulting in a variety of disorders such as amnesia, dementia or prosopagnosia (inability to recognise familiar faces). In addition to his research expertise, Dr. Jansari has also developed an expertise in being able to ‘translate’ general issues in psychology and science to the lay-person to make them more accessible having appeared on TV in the UK, Germany, Norway and Japan. For this work, he has been nominated for a British Academy Charles Darwin Award for communicating science to non-specialist audiences.