It is well documented in the literature that visual perceptual learning (PL)—repeated exposure or practice with a visual task—can improve visual performance. Improved performance has been found for a wide range of early-level visual tasks, including discrimination of orientation (Fiorentini & Berardi,
1981), motion (Ball & Sekuler,
1987), contrast (Sowden, Rose, & Davies,
2002), and texture (Karni & Sagi,
1991). These studies suggest that the visual system maintains plasticity into adulthood, and recent studies have demonstrated that these methods can be used as interventions to improve visual function for populations ranging from amblyopia patients (Levi & Li,
2009; Li et al.,
2013) to older adults (Andersen, Ni, Bower, & Watanabe,
2010; Bower & Andersen,
2012; Bower, Watanabe, & Andersen,
2013; DeLoss, Watanabe, & Andersen,
2013). Although a number of studies have suggested that PL results in processing changes in early levels of visual processing (Karni & Sagi,
1991) such as V1 (Yotsumoto, Watanabe, & Sasaki,
2008), other studies have suggested that PL training effects are the result of changes in higher-level task configuration (Jeter, Dosher, Petrov, & Lu,
2009).