In this study we aim to test the hypothesis that letters are more resilient to crowding than other types of stimuli, particularly in locations on the visual field where crowded letters are sampled during reading. For readers of English, this is in the right hemifield at smaller eccentricities. Further, letters are normally encountered in horizontally oriented strings, leading to the possibility that the spatial pattern of reduced crowding for letters may be specific to horizontal flankers. To test these hypotheses we will conduct 4 similar experiments. In each, targets will be presented in six locations across the horizontal meridian, and critical spacing will be measured for each location and condition using QUEST staircases. In experiments 1 and 2, targets will be letters or inverted versions of those letters, and in experiments 3 and 4, targets will be letters or Gabor patches. In experiments 1 and 3, targets will be flanked horizontally by two other stimuli from the same condition, and in experiments 2 and 4, targets will be flanked vertically by two other stimuli from the same condition. For each experiment, the critical spacing will be analyzed across the locations, looking for biases in the critical distance as a function of hemifield, eccentricity, and the stimuli conditions.