Timely and objective assessment of executive functions is critical for diagnosing and monitoring cognitive disorders, yet conventional scoring of Hayling Test responses remains subjective and prone to inter-rater variability. To address this challenge, we introduce an end-to-end automated scoring pipeline using state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP). We systematically benchmark both static embeddings FastText, a range of transformer-based encoders, and recent large language models (LLMs) including Phi-3-mini, Zephyr-7B, XGLM-7.5B, Qwen1.5-7B, DeepSeek-V2, Llama-2-7B, and others on a corpus of 2,414 manually annotated French responses. Each response is classified into three penalty levels: 0 (correct inhibition), 1 (partial inhibition error), and 3 (failure to inhibit). After fine-tuning, the cross-lingual encoder LaBSE achieves the best overall performance, with a Macro-$\mathbf{F}_{1}$of$\mathbf{0. 8 0}$, Balanced Accuracy of 0.79, and overall Accuracy of 0.83, outperforming all baselines and LLMs. Among LLMs, Phi-3-mini achieves the highest scores (Macro-$\mathbf{F}_{1} \mathbf{0. 5 7}$, ACC 0.63), yet remains below supervised approaches. Our automated approach standardizes test scoring, reduces subjective bias, and enables nearinstantaneous, scalable neuropsychological assessments paving the way for more reliable and efficient clinical and research workflows. The code supporting this work is publicly available at: https://github.com/insafhamdi/AI-hayling

User’s experience in virtual reality includes different cognitive, emotional, and behavioural factors. One key factor that characterises the interaction between humans and their environment is the sense of Agency. In virtual reality, the sense of Agency is defined as the sensation of having a virtual body which moves and acts accordingly to one’s intentions. However, it is usually measured with self-assessed questionnaires, focusing mainly on motor control within the virtual environment. We designed an experiment based on a game of rigged archery, manipulating avatar control and distant consequences of user’s actions. This allowed us to separately study both dimensions of Agency: the Feeling of Agency and the Judgement of Agency. Through this, we studied how they are linked with other psychological factors such as Locus of Control, Satisfaction and Self-Serving Attributional Bias. Our results suggest an influence of Internal Locus of Control on the Feeling of Agency. We observed that participant’s satisfaction levels was correlated with their assessment of Agency, and more prominently their Judgement of Agency. In addition, our results show that Feeling of Agency and Judgement of Agency can be understood as two distinct parameters of one’s subjective experience in virtual reality. Lastly, we observed that participants immersed in our virtual environment did show a Self-Serving Attributional Bias, as in real life. Indeed, they tended to claim authorship on successful actions while blaming failure on external factors. We believe that these results offer a better understanding of the different factors that could impact the sense of Agency in virtual reality.

Thanks to its strong capacity to immerse users in virtual worlds, virtual reality can elicit various emotions with diverse environments. This aspect of virtual reality makes it an interesting and powerful tool in many fields, such as entertainment with scenarios based on a strong emotional implication, training in particular for social or communication skills, or even medical therapy with phobia or addiction treatment. However, in virtual reality the participant lives the experience through an avatar, and feels the emotion according to what happens to this avatar.This paper discusses the link between embodiment and emotional implication in virtual reality. In particular, we looked at how emotions and the sense of embodiment are correlated in virtual reality. Through an experiment, we demonstrate that the sense of embodiment is strongly correlated with the emotional experience of the virtual environment. The sense of embodiment is increased when the virtual scenarios make the participants feel strong emotions, whether those emotions are positive or negative. We also show that emotions mainly affect two sub-components of embodiment: the appearance and response sub-scales.

We present results of a preliminary study on our planned system for the detection of obstacles in the physical environment by means of an RGB-D sensor and their unobtrusive signalling using metaphors within the virtual environment (VE).

Stereo and head tracking are considered as distance perception cues in virtual environments. Several studies have investigated their influence on several tasks. Results were different among studies. In this paper, we conducted a complete experiment investigating the influence of the stereo and the head tracking in the specific context of virtual visits of houses during architectural project review with clients. We manipulated the stereo and the head tracking in four conditions and we examined the effects of the two factors on distance estimations (walls size, habitability, etc.), task difficulty, presence and simulator sickness. Results revealed a significant effect of the stereo on the judgement of the habitability, the dimensions of the rooms and task difficulty. However, for both features, no significant effects were found on the presence and simulator sickness.

In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of using virtual environments for memorization tasks in the context of learning activities. Our approach relies on the Method of Loci. To that purpose, we conducted an experiment comparing egocentric and allocentric representations and incorporating a navigation task. Our results show that an egocentric frame of reference offers the best spatial cues to help memorizing lists of items.

In architectural project review, the perception of the near surrounding ground is important for the evaluation of the virtual environment (VE). This near surrounding ground is missing when using wall screens. To address this problem we suggest increasing the Vertical Field of View (VFoV). One solution is the use of the rendering approach such as non-planar projection. However, simply increasing the FoV of the rendering leads to much distortion in the VE which is not suitable for architectural project review. We propose a new hybrid projection combining a perspective projection in the center of the screen and a cylindrical-like projection on the top and bottom boarders. By this, we increase VFoV without incurring large deformations to preserve the perception of distances and to allow seeing the surrounding ground. We also report the results of an experiment we conducted to evaluate distance perception with our projection.

Distances are perceived as being more compressed in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) than in real environments. The goal of this study is to identify the most important factors that influence decision making and accuracy of distance perception in the context of architectural project reviews. Technical factors such as field of view, display devices and motion parallax were widely studied. In this paper, we have investigated other individual and contextual factors. We conducted a between-subject experiment using an immersive large screen display to examine the influence of the three factors: 1) the cognitive profile of the user (visual, auditory and kinesthetic - VAK), 2) the furnishing of the house, and 3) the locomotion speed, on distance perception. Results reveal that participants with visual profile were more accurate in distance estimation. Further, furnished houses were more suitable for virtual visits. The locomotion speed also seems to influence virtual visits which were better with a slow locomotion speed. Based on the results of our study, we finally present guidelines for setting up architectural project review tools which employ similar setup.

We present Bubble Bee - an extension for the 3D bubble cursor in Virtual Environments (VEs). This technique provides an alternative to arrows for pointing out a direction in a 3D scene.

We present a new Virtual Reality (VR) interaction technique, called Cursor On Surface (CrOS). It is an interaction technique for cursor manipulation on 2-manifolds using touch screen input. The objective is to provide a technique to easily perform complex modelling operations in VR. CrOS is based on an algorithm which maps 2-D inputs into cursor displacements on 3-D surfaces. The technique relies on two principles. Firstly, it restricts the manipulation space to a 2-D space. Secondly, it reduces the complexity of the task through an automatic orientation algorithm that prevent the user from switching between edition task and object repositioning task.

We present Starfish - a new target selection technique for virtual reality (VR) environments. This technique provides a solution to accurately select targets in high-density 3D scenes. The user controls a 3D pointer surrounded by a starfish-shaped closed surface. The extremity of each branch ends exactly on preselected near targets. The shape is an implicit surface built on the segments going from the pointer to each of these targets. As the pointer moves across the scene, the starfish shape is dynamically rebuilt. When it is locked the pointer is allowed to move inside the volume, slide down the desired branch, reach and select the corresponding target. Since the pointer stays within the shape, targets are easy to reach and select.

The use of Touch Screen Interaction (TSI) for 3-D interaction entails both the addition of new haptic cues and the separation of the manipulation of the Degrees of Freedom (DoF) of the task: a 3 DoF task must be transformed into a 2-D+1-D task to be completed using a touch screen. In this paper, we investigate the impact of these two factors in the context of a 3-D positioning task. Our goal is to identify their respective influence on subjective preferences and performance measurements. To that purpose, we conducted an experimental comparison of five positioning techniques, isolating the influence of each of these two factors. The results we obtained suggest that the addition of haptic cues does not influence the user precision. However, the decomposition of the task has a strong influence on accuracy. More precisely, separating the manipulation of the depth dimension leads to an increased precision while isolating other dimensions does not influence the results. To explain this result, we realised a behavioural analysis of the data. This study suggests that the differences in the performance may be linked to the perceptual structure of the techniques. A technique isolating the manipulation of the depth seems to have a more adapted perceptual structure than a technique separating the height, even if those two dimensions are equally involved in the realisation of the task.

We introduce a new technique of haptic guidance, for navigation and control of applications in virtual environments. We haptically simulate the collisions of the pointer with the borders of a polyhedral menu, making it glide towards the items. We propose the preliminary results of an empirical evaluation of this technique.

In this paper we present a new interaction technique based on degrees of freedom (DoF) decomposition for accurate positioning in virtual reality environments. This technique (called DIOD for Decomposition and Integration Of Degrees of freedom) is based on an adaptation of the Two-Component Model. It provides two different control levels regarding DoF coordination, one integrating and one separating the manipulation of the DoF. Our hypothesis is that each control level is appropriated to a different phase of the positioning task. During the ballistic phase, users manipulate all the dimensions of the task at the same time. However, during the control phase, users try to manipulate specific dimensions individually. The results of a preliminary study we conducted seem to indicate that the DIOD technique is more efficient than existing techniques.

In this paper, we introduce a 3D menu with a new technique of haptic guidance, for virtual environments. The 3D menu consists in a thin polyhedral shape, with the items at the corners. The HardBorders technique haptically simulates the collisions of the pointer with the borders of the polyhedron, making it glide towards the items of the menu. A comparison with 2 reference modalities has been performed, showing a clear advantage of our HardBorders technique.

In this paper we investigate the influence of the integration and separation of the Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) on the users' performances during 3-D orientation tasks. For this purpose, we compare the performances and the level of DOF's coordination users reached using two interaction techniques, one integrating and the other separating the task's DOF. To evaluate the degree of coordination, we propose a new behavioural measurement (called Magnitude of Degrees of Freedom's Separation), which provides the number of DOF simultaneously manipulated during an orientation task. The results of our study suggest that users are not able to integrate the manipulation of all the DOF during the whole task even using a direct manipulation technique. Moreover, if the interaction eases the task's decomposition, its use can lead to significant improvements regarding the achievement times. This result suggests that the simultaneous manipulation of all the DOF does not necessary lead to the best performances.