Only if you have tenure in some "cog sci" department where everyone agrees it will be impossible for your "work" to have any meaning or relevance to any other field, or any practical consequences what-so-ever, but still sound scholarly and involve some kind of statistical analysis of data that would require some expensive equipment to gather. In any case, this also means you have a colleague who will agree 100% with me.
Or, you mean "things I am interested in and skilled at" vs. "things I am not interested in and have no talent for", in which case these might be separate cognitive domains of Mr. Anthony Abachler...
Or, finally, you mean that time you spend sharping your programming skills will not much further your visual design skills, and vice versa. In which case I agree -- altho time spend programming for the purposes of visual design will be specifically that.