Beyond diagnosis: Why and how virtual reality should be used in research on neurodevelopmental conditions?

Over the past two decades, virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a technique for studying neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and developmental coordination disorder. Until now, the predominant focus of VR applications in this field has been on developing new assessment and diagnostic tools, aiming to identify NDC symptoms in engaging and ecologically valid digital environments. However, despite these advancements, VR remains underutilized as a tool for basic NDC research. This paper urges researchers to harness the potential of VR in testing embodied cognitive mechanisms underlying NDCs. That is, leveraging VR's functionality to systematically manipulate sensory and social experiences in real-world simulations and test participants in active, whole-body, daily tasks. Specifically, we argue that VR's distinctive value is that it allows researchers to manipulate distractor load, sensory congruence, social contingency, and action demands within everyday-like tasks while concurrently recording gaze, movement, and physiology. Such capabilities enable richer experimental phenotyping of NDCs and support mechanistic questions that are difficult to test cleanly with either de-contextualized laboratory tasks or uncontrolled real-world observation. We conclude by pointing to future directions for VR-based research of neurodiversity.