Abstract
After training, visual perceptual learning improvements are mostly constrained to the trained stimulus feature and retinal location. The aim of this study is to construct an integrated paradigm where the visual learning happens in a more natural context and in parallel for multiple stimulus types, and to test the generalization of learning-related improvements towards untrained features, locations, and more general cognitive domains. Half the subjects were trained with a gamified perceptual learning paradigm for ten hours, which consisted of an orientation discrimination task and a novel object categorization task embedded in a three-dimensional maze. A second group of subjects, an active control group, played ten hours of Candy Crush Saga. Before and after training, all subjects completed a ‘near transfer’ orientation discrimination and novel object categorization task, as well as a set of ‘far transfer’ general cognitive and attentional tasks. During the perceptual learning tasks, two different stimulus features and two retinal location pairs were assessed in each task. For the experimental group, one stimulus feature and retinal location pair was trained, whilst the other one remained untrained. Both features and location pairs were untrained in the control group. Far transfer did occur in some domains across all subjects irrespective of the training regimen (i.e. executive functioning, mental rotation performance, and multitask performance and speed). Near transfer was present in both groups, however only more pronounced for one particular task in the experimental group, namely novel object categorization. To conclude, all but one near transfer task did not generalize more than the control group.
Highlights
Usain Bolt is a world champion expert at running 100 and 200 meters
If expertise were domain specific, how could Usain Bolt play at a national soccer level lacking the specific soccer training all other players in the team received? This is the question which we aimed to address, not by using Usain Bolt, but the domain of visual perception
Over the years various visual learning paradigms were documented to result in more general improvements, which we review here briefly in order of increasing distance from the classic perceptual learning paradigms
Summary
Usain Bolt is a world champion expert at running 100 and 200 meters. He quit athletics and strengthened a first class soccer team. Could Usain Bolt be the number one in cycling, chess and musical instruments too? Not: no one is born an expert, according to Malcolm Gladwell [1] and based upon a wide range of research studies [2] it takes about 10 000 hours or ten years of deliberate practice of one topic to reach the expert level. If expertise were domain specific, how could Usain Bolt play at a national soccer level lacking the specific soccer training all other players in the team received? This is the question which we aimed to address, not by using Usain Bolt, but the domain of visual perception. If expertise were domain specific, how could Usain Bolt play at a national soccer level lacking the specific soccer training all other players in the team received? This is the question which we aimed to address, not by using Usain Bolt, but the domain of visual perception.
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