Development of Crowding Distance in Children Is Faster and Later Than Visual Acuity and Better Predicts Reading Performance.

From age three years, visual acuity improves 1.4×, reaching near-adult levels at six years (P > 0.05).

Crowding distance reduces 4.8×, reaching near-adult levels at eight years (P > 0.05).

Removing age shows crowding distance, but not visual acuity, matters for reading (crowding distance-trigram: r = -0.24, P = 0.00065; crowding distance-repeated r = -0.25, P = 0.00049; visual acuity: r = -0.13, P = 0.075).