Psychometric data and regression-based norms for the Virtual Environments Navigation Assessment for young and middle-aged adults (VIENNA Young)

Spatial navigation is critical for daily functioning but is rarely assessed in clinical settings despiterobust evidence for its utility in many neurological disorders. Numerous existing experimentalparadigms leverage virtual environments but often lack reported psychometric properties and normdata. Additionally, most paradigms focus on active navigation and strongly rely on episodicmemory. This limits their clinical utility especially for individuals with motor or memoryimpairments. Here, we introduce the Virtual Environments Navigation Assessment for young andmiddle-aged adults (VIENNA Young). VIENNA Young is a 16-minute neuropsychological testadapted from VIENNA for both in-person and remote use. Designed to emphasize visuospatial andexecutive components, it assesses informed navigation in dynamic virtual environments andminimizes manual dexterity demands through passive navigation. A hybrid study involving 422healthy participants (18–67 years) demonstrated consistent performance across settings andfavorable psychometric properties, including internal consistency, test-retest reliability, andconstruct validity. Navigation performance was higher for younger individuals, men, people withhigh exposure to spatial tasks, urban versus rural residents, and participants playing video games,especially allocentric or map-based games. VIENNA Young is freely available and provided withregression-based normative models accounting for age, gender, and gaming experience to ensureaccurate interpretation across populations. VIENNA Young is a valid, reliable, accessible, andscalable assessment tailored to evaluate navigation abilities beyond episodic memory deficits. Itsflexible and precise norming approach sets a precedent for integrating gaming experience intonorms for computerized cognitive tests and supports navigation assessment in clinical routinesettings and diverse research contexts.