To handle complex technical operations, operators acquire skills in vocational training. Most of these skills are not used immediately but at some point later; this is called temporal transfer. Our previous research showed that cognitive abilities such as general mental ability and memory are good predictors of temporal transfer. In addition to temporal transfer, operators also have to solve non-routine and abnormal upcoming problems using their skill set; this type of transfer is called adaptive transfer. Based on previous findings, it (...) is assumed that GMA and memory will affect adaptive transfer as well. Thirty-three engineering students learned how to operate a complex technical system in normal operation with either a fixed or a contingent sequence. After two weeks, all participants had to adapt their learned skills to handle the adaptive transfer task, which was not initially trained. It was shown that high GMA positively predicted adaptive transfer, but no effect of memory was found. This implies that GMA is required to solve new complex tasks using a learned skill set. The findings are in line with studies that showed an effect of GMA on temporal transfer. (shrink)

Although taste and smell seem hard to imagine, some people nevertheless report vivid imagery in these sensory modalities. We investigate whether experts are better able to imagine smells and tastes because they have learned the ability, or whether they are better imaginers in the first place, and so become experts. To test this, we first compared a group of wine experts to yoked novices using a battery of questionnaires. We show for the first time that experts report greater vividness of (...) wine imagery, with no difference in vividness across sensory modalities. In contrast, novices had more vivid color imagery than taste or odor imagery for wines. Experts and novices did not differ on other vividness of imagery measures, suggesting a domain‐specific effect of expertise. Critically, in a second study, we followed a group of students commencing a wine course and a group of matched control participants. Students and controls did not differ before the course, but after the wine course students reported more vivid wine imagery. We provide evidence that expertise improves imagery, exemplifying the extent of plasticity of cognition underlying the chemical senses. (shrink)