Given appropriate training, human observers typically demonstrate clear improvements in performance on perceptual tasks. However, the benefits of training frequently fail to generalize to other tasks, even those that appear similar to the trained task. A great deal of research has focused on the training task characteristics that influence the extent to which learning generalizes. However, less is known about what might predict the considerable individual variations in performance. As such, we conducted an individual differences study to identify basic cognitive abilities and/or dispositional traits that predict an individual’s ability to learn and/or generalize learning in tasks of perceptual learning. We first showed that the rate of learning and the asymptotic level of performance that is achieved in two different perceptual learning tasks (motion direction and odd-ball texture detection) are correlated across individuals, as is the degree of immediate generalization that is observed and the rate at which a generalization task is learned. This indicates that there are indeed consistent individual differences in perceptual learning abilities. We then showed that several basic cognitive abilities and dispositional traits are associated with an individual’s ability to learn (e.g., simple reaction time; sensitivity to punishment) and/or generalize learning (e.g., cognitive flexibility; openness to experience) in perceptual learning tasks. We suggest that the observed individual difference relationships may provide possible targets for future intervention studies meant to increase perceptual learning and generalization.

经过适当的培训，人类观察者通常会在感知任务上表现出明显的改善。但是，培训的好处常常不能推广到其他任务，即使那些看起来与受训任务相似的任务也是如此。大量研究集中在影响学习普及程度的训练任务特征上。但是，对于什么可以预测性能的巨大个体差异知之甚少。因此，我们进行了个体差异研究，以识别可预测个体在感知学习任务中学习和/或概括学习能力的基本认知能力和/或性格特征。我们首先表明，在两个不同的知觉学习任务（运动方向和奇球纹理检测）中获得的学习速度和渐近水平之间的相关性与个体之间的相关性一样，所观察到的立即泛化程度和学习泛化任务的速度。这表明在感知学习能力上确实存在一致的个体差异。然后，我们证明了几种基本的认知能力和性格特征与个人在感知学习任务中的学习能力（例如，简单的反应时间；对惩罚的敏感性）和/或广义的学习能力（例如，认知的灵活性；经验的开放性）相关。