Significance statement
DISEASE
Visual abilities have an important role to play in the diagnosis of disease as diagnosis often requires the categorisation of medical images. This study demonstrates that a domain-general high-level visual ability can predict accuracy of medical image categorisation. This is an important first step in establishing a link between visual abilities and diagnostic accuracy. We also contribute to the understanding of the nature of object recognition ability by showing that it relates to category learning. This relationship only appeared in our tasks when continuous feedback on category learning was given. It is plausible that continuous feedback allowed participants to abandon use of a simple rule, and/or to use exemplar comparisons. This suggests new directions to investigate the relationship between categorisation and recognition ability.