Editorial to the Special Issue on “On mechanisms of cognitive training and transfer in development”

There is a popular appeal to the idea that learning to play an instrument could make one better at languages or that playing chess improves one's social skills. Does learning from experience generalize from one context to another? If so, what are the mechanisms that underpin such transferability? These questions are central to advancing our understanding of the extraordinary adaptability of the human species. They get at fundamental issues of our cognitive architecture and how we learn.