Thus, task-irrelevant VPL of a feat

Thus, task-irrelevant VPL of a feature occurs only if the feature is subthreshold or is not salient and therefore cannot be detected by the attentional system, unless a given environment is optimal for task-irrelevant learning. Another aspect is that although task-relevant VPL may be at least partially associated with changes in processing specific for the trained task, task-irrelevant VPL is not (Figure 1). Results of recent human imaging studies (Baumann et al. 2008, Shibata et al. 2011, Zhang et al. 2010b) suggest that task-irrelevant VPL is associated with the early or mid stage, whereas changes resulting from training on a task are associated with later stages.