Perceptual resources: Transfer of training and individual differences

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of transfer between a simple lab task and a complex task which do not appear similar at the surface. The complex task used in this experiment was Fantavision, an off-the-shelf Playstation II game. Occlusions and visual words were also used as the two simple lab tasks. Ratings on the Multiple Resources Questionnaire suggested that the occlusions task shared an important underlying cognitive/perceptual resource with Fantavision. Alternatively, the visual words task was not found to share this important cognitive/perceptual resource with the target task. Given the similarities between Fantavision and the occlusions task, it was hypothesized that more evidence of transfer would be detected between Fantavision and the occlusions task than between Fantavision and the visual words task.;Results suggested that playing Fantavision facilitated significantly more improvement on the occlusions task than on the visual words task. Conversely, participants who completed the occlusions task did not perform significantly better on Fantavision than those who completed the visual words task or those assigned to a Fantavision only control. Despite the lack of significant differences in complex task performance between the occlusions, visual words, and control groups, promising trends were found. These findings support a need for more research to elucidate the nature of transfer between complex and simple tasks that share underlying cognitive/perceptual resources.