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Traditionally, it is thought that visual crowding obeys Bouma\u2019s law, i.e., all elements within a certain distance interfere with the target, and that adding more elements always leads to stronger crowding. Crowding is predominantly studied using sparse displays (a target surrounded by a few flankers). However, many studies have shown that this approach leads to wrong conclusions about human vision. Van der Burg and colleagues proposed a paradigm to measure crowding in dense displays using genetic algorithms. Displays were selected and combined over several generations to maximize human performance. In contrast to Bouma\u2019s law, only the target\u2019s nearest neighbours affected performance. Here, we tested various models to explain these results. We used the same genetic algorithm, but instead of selecting displays based on human performance we selected displays based on the model\u2019s outputs. We found that all models based on the traditional feedforward pooling framework of vision were unable to reproduce human behaviour. In contrast, all models involving a dedicated grouping stage explained the results successfully. We show how traditional models can be improved by adding a grouping stage.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1009187","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,7,6]],"date-time":"2021-07-06T17:33:43Z","timestamp":1625592823000},"page":"e1009187","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pcbi.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":21,"title":["Shrinking Bouma\u2019s window: How to model crowding in dense displays"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7266-627X","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Alban","family":"Bornet","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5120-9750","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Adrien","family":"Doerig","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Michael H.","family":"Herzog","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8634-794X","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Gregory","family":"Francis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Erik","family":"Van der Burg","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,7,6]]},"reference":[{"issue":"4","key":"pcbi.1009187.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"519","DOI":"10.1002\/cne.902010405","article-title":"Visual topography of V2 in the macaque","volume":"201","author":"R Gattass","year":"1981","journal-title":"J Comp Neurol"},{"issue":"6","key":"pcbi.1009187.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1831","DOI":"10.1523\/JNEUROSCI.08-06-01831.1988","article-title":"Visuotopic organization and extent of V3 and V4 of the macaque","volume":"8","author":"R Gattass","year":"1988","journal-title":"J Neurosci"},{"issue":"1","key":"pcbi.1009187.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"106","DOI":"10.1113\/jphysiol.1962.sp006837","article-title":"Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional architecture in the cat\u2019s visual cortex","volume":"160","author":"DH Hubel","year":"1962","journal-title":"J Physiol"},{"issue":"2","key":"pcbi.1009187.ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"229","DOI":"10.1152\/jn.1965.28.2.229","article-title":"Receptive fields and functional architecture in two nonstriate visual areas (18 and 19) of the cat","volume":"28","author":"DH Hubel","year":"1965","journal-title":"J Neurophysiol"},{"key":"pcbi.1009187.ref005","unstructured":"LeCun Y, Boser BE, Denker JS, Henderson D, Howard RE, Hubbard WE, et al. 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