If considering only the first session, learning new words in anki is like verbal learning. And verbal learning, though not connected here to cognitive testing, transfers to other abilities: "There is considerable evidence that verbal learning correlates reasonably strongly with performance in a number of important practical tasks. For instance, verbal learning tests have been demonstrated to be highly correlated with prospective remembering in real life, which means remembering to perform a planned action at the appropriate time [29]." -QM Science