Primitive visual channels have a causal role in cognitive transfer

William Saban,Gal Raz,Roland H Grabner,Shai Gabay,Roi Cohen Kadosh

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-88271-y

Abstract

Scientific investigations have long emphasized the cortex’s role in cognitive transfer and arithmetic abilities. To date, however, this assumption has not been thoroughly empirically investigated. Here we demonstrated that primitive mechanisms—lower visual channels—have a causal role in cognitive transfer of complex skills such as symbolic arithmetic. We found that exposing only one monocular channel to a visuospatial training resulted in a larger transfer effect in the trained monocular channel compared to the untrained monocular channel. Such cognitive transfer was found for both novel figural-spatial problems (near transfer) and novel subtraction problems (far transfer). Importantly, the benefits of the trained eye were not observed in old problems and in other tasks that did not involve visuospatial abilities (the Stroop task, a multiplication task). These results challenge the exclusive role of the cortex in cognitive transfer and complex arithmetic. In addition, the results suggest a new mechanism for the emergence of cognitive skills, that could be shared across different species.

Highlights

Scientific investigations have long emphasized the cortex’s role in cognitive transfer and arithmetic abilities
To examine whether monocular channels are involved in cognitive transfer processes, we presented the visual information to only one monocular channel during cognitive training to test whether transfer would be enhanced in the trained eye after the training stage
We assessed the effect of training on the figural-spatial task by running two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with Eye and Problem Novelty as within-subject factors, and accuracy or reaction time (RT) as the dependent variable

Summary

Introduction

Scientific investigations have long emphasized the cortex’s role in cognitive transfer and arithmetic abilities. The benefits of the trained eye were not observed in old problems and in other tasks that did not involve visuospatial abilities (the Stroop task, a multiplication task) These results challenge the exclusive role of the cortex in cognitive transfer and complex arithmetic. Because even organisms that possess only rudimentary neural systems have the ability to transfer s kills[11], ubiquitous neural systems (UNS), which are shared across species, might be involved in these processes These theoretical frameworks and converging empirical evidence fuel the motivation to examine whether primitive low-level visual channels are functionally involved in transfer processes. As predicted, primitive low-level visual channels are functionally involved in transfer, exposing only one eye to a figural-spatial training task will increase the transfer effect in the trained eye compared to the untrained eye in subtraction. A pattern in which there is no difference between the Eye conditions suggests that the locus of improvement could be in subcortical-monocular or cortical-binocular channels

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