Science
Cognition measured where it actually happens
APIScog is built on a simple premise: a cognitive task set in a life-like environment asks more of a person than an abstract one, and so tells you more. This page sets out the reasoning, the domains the MVP targets, and the measures under exploration — including what they cannot yet show.
Ecological validity
Why life-like environments, not brain-training games
Conventional cognitive training tends to use abstract, game-style tasks: shapes to match, sequences to recall, targets to tap. They are easy to standardise and easy to score, but they sit a long way from the situations where attention and memory actually get used.
APIScog begins instead with an airport-style scenario — a security lane, a baggage belt, gate signage, other travellers — where attention, working memory, processing speed, visual discrimination and impulse control are exercised in context, as part of doing something recognisable.
Abstract task
- Shapes, grids and sequences
- No situational context
- Performance in isolation
Ecologically valid task
- A setting with its own demands
- Competing, realistic distractors
- Performance while doing something
Cognitive domains
Five domains, exercised in context
The MVP targets these five. They are practised as part of the airport scenario rather than as separate exercises, which is the point of building the environment in the first place.
Attention & Focus
Target detection, sustained attention and distractor resistance
Working Memory
Holding, updating and applying task rules
Processing Speed
Fast, accurate decision-making under time pressure
Impulse Control
Withholding or cancelling responses when the task changes
Visual Discrimination
Identifying relevant targets among similar distractors
Candidate metrics
What task performance can describe
The platform explores how users complete tasks through the measures below. These are candidate metrics under development, not validated outputs.
- Accuracy
- The proportion of responses that were correct.
- Reaction time
- How long a response takes from the moment it becomes possible.
- Response variability
- How much reaction time fluctuates across a run, rather than its average.
- Omissions
- Occasions where a response was required and none was made.
- Commissions
- Responses made when the task called for none.
- Speed–accuracy balance
- The trade-off a person settles on between answering quickly and answering correctly.
Exploratory digital markers
Three streams the headset records
Alongside task performance, APIScog captures movement data. These are being explored as candidate markers of engagement, distraction, reorientation and response control — an active area of work, not an established result.
Eye movement
- Gaze pattern
- Fixation time
- Distraction detection
Head orientation
- Head movement
- Reorientation
- Engagement
Hand / controller
- Response style
- Movement path
- Task interaction
Together these form a richer data layer around how a task was completed, not only whether it was.
What this does not show
Honest about the stage
APIScog is currently at MVP stage. The platform is not yet clinically validated and is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. The current focus is feasibility testing, usability, cognitive task design and exploratory digital marker development.
- No measure on this page has been validated against a clinical standard.
- Nothing APIScog records constitutes a diagnosis, a screening result or a clinical assessment.
- Normative data — what a given score means relative to a population — does not yet exist for these tasks.
- Any future diagnostic or clinical application would require appropriate validation and regulatory review.
Interested in the evidence work?
Feasibility testing and pilot collaborations are the next stage. If you work in cognitive research, clinical practice or VR, we would like to hear from you.
APIScog is currently at MVP stage. It is not yet clinically validated and is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Future diagnostic or clinical applications would require appropriate validation and regulatory review.