Technical aspects and testing of a program to assess deficits in facial expression recognition in childhood cancer survivors

Abstract

The research presented here focuses on the ease of use of an instrument's interface for a target pediatric population, where participants were asked to interpret virtual character facial expressions. Fortyone children, both pediatric cancer survivors and healthy recruits, took part in six tasks that had them describe or express their confidence in descriptions of different facial expressions, portrayed either overtly or subtly and dynamically or statically by eight virtual characters. In this test of usability and feasibility, childhood cancer survivors performed comparably to healthy participants, suggesting that this instrument is feasible for use with cancer patients. © Virtual Reality Medical Institute.