A prediction of all of these models is that, when adding more flankers, crowding increases because more noise is pooled or more elements can be confused. However, this is not always the case (Manassi, Sayim, & Herzog,
2012; Wolford & Chambers,
1983). For example, in a previous contribution, we determined vernier offset discrimination with different flanker configurations (
Figure 2). In the first experiment, crowding was strong when the flankers had the same length as the vernier (
Figure 2a). Increasing or decreasing the length of the flankers led to a
decrease in crowding compared to the previous condition (
Figure 2b and
c). Pooling and substitution models can explain the improvement in performance with the short flankers (
Figure 2a and
b) but fail to explain the change with long flankers because long flankers increase the amount of irrelevant information (
Figure 2a and
c). In a second experiment, we showed that a Good Gestalt plays a crucial role in crowding. When the vernier was flanked by two single lines, crowding increased compared to the unflanked condition (
Figure 2d). When the two lines were extended to a rectangle, crowding decreased (
Figure 2d and
e). Keeping constant the “low-level energy” of the stimulus, crossing the horizontal lines of the rectangles increased crowding compared to the previous condition (
Figure 2e and
f). Hence, figural aspects strongly matter in crowding (see also Livne & Sagi,
2007). Also increasing flanker size can improve performance (Levi & Carney,
2009; Saarela, Sayim, Westheimer, & Herzog,
2009). Very similar results were also found in foveal vision (Malania, Herzog, & Westheimer,
2007; Sayim, Westheimer, & Herzog,
2008,
2010).