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Introduction: Despite the known associations between near work and myopia, and retinal image quality and eye growth, accommodation‐induced changes in higher order aberrations (HOA's) and retinal image quality in children with different refractive errors are poorly understood. Methods: Ocular HOA's were measured using a Hartmann‐Shack wavefront sensor (COAS‐HD, Wavefront Sciences) in 18 myopic and 18 age‐ and sex‐matched non‐myopic children during short‐term accommodation tasks (four demands of 0, 3, 6 and 9 D) presented using a Badal optometer. Eighth order Zernike polynomials were fitted across a 2.3 mm pupil diameter to determine refractive power vectors (M, J180 and J45) and the accommodation error, and a 4 mm pupil was used for HOA analyses. Retinal image quality was examined using the visual Strehl ratio based on the optical transfer function (VSOTF) for third to eighth radial orders only. Results: Most refractive error group differences were observed for the 6 and 9 D demands. Myopic children underwent greater changes in with‐the‐rule astigmatism (J180), higher order and third order RMS values, primary vertical (C3−1) and horizontal coma (C31), and several other individual Zernike coefficients compared with non‐myopic children (all refractive error group by demand interaction p‐values of ≤0.02). Non‐myopic children exhibited a greater negative shift in primary (C40) and positive shift in secondary spherical aberration (C60) (both refractive error group by demand interaction p‐values of ≤0.002). The VSOTF degraded for the 6 and 9 D demands in both groups, but the myopic children underwent a greater mean (SE) reduction from 0 D of −0.274 (0.048) for the 9 D demand, compared with −0.131 (0.052) for the non‐myopic children (p = 0.001). Conclusion: These results may have implications for the association between near work, accommodation and myopia development, particularly related to the use of short working distances during near tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]