Abstract
Humans have a remarkable capacity to learn and adapt, but surprisingly little research has demonstrated generalized learning in which new skills and strategies can be used flexibly across a range of tasks and contexts. In the present work we examined whether generalized learning could result from visual–motor training under stroboscopic visual conditions. Individuals were assigned to either an experimental condition that trained with stroboscopic eyewear or to a control condition that underwent identical training with non-stroboscopic eyewear. The training consisted of multiple sessions of athletic activities during which participants performed simple drills such as throwing and catching. To determine if training led to generalized benefits, we used computerized measures to assess perceptual and cognitive abilities on a variety of tasks before and after training. Computer-based assessments included measures of visual sensitivity (central and peripheral motion coherence thresholds), transient spatial attention (a useful field of view – dual task paradigm), and sustained attention (multiple-object tracking). Results revealed that stroboscopic training led to significantly greater re-test improvement in central visual field motion sensitivity and transient attention abilities. No training benefits were observed for peripheral motion sensitivity or peripheral transient attention abilities, nor were benefits seen for sustained attention during multiple-object tracking. These findings suggest that stroboscopic training can effectively improve some, but not all aspects of visual perception and attention.
Highlights
A fundamental question about the nature of learning is how practice and prior experiences change an organism
If people are forced to operate in an impoverished visual environment, might their visual abilities improve once they return to a normal environment? The goal of the current research program was to ask this question by determining if visual–motor training under stroboscopic visual conditions produced any generalizable learning to other untrained domains
The lack of uniform re-test improvements across tasks, or across the visual field, indicates that benefits do not transfer to all aspects of visual cognition, and suggests that there might be a specific profile to the generalization of stroboscopic training effects
Summary
A fundamental question about the nature of learning is how practice and prior experiences change an organism. There have been a number of reports of generalized learning in which practice on specific tasks can result in beneficial transfer of learned abilities to other untrained domains (reviewed in Green and Bavelier, 2008). Extensive athletic training has been shown to improve performance on a number of measures of perception and cognition (reviewed in Mann et al, 2007), including covert attentional orienting (Lum et al, 2002), visual search and anticipation (Savelsbergh et al, 2002), motion speed and direction discrimination (Kioumourtzoglou et al, 1998), and response inhibition (Kida et al, 2005; but see Memmert et al, 2009)
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