Readers may not integrate words strictly in the order in which they appear in Chinese reading.

The current study investigated whether word integration follows a strictly sequential order during natural Chinese reading. Chinese readers' eye movements were recorded when they read sentences containing a three-character string (ABC), where BC was always a two-character word and AB was also a two-character word in the overlapping condition but not a word in the non-overlapping condition. We manipulated the extent to which word BC was plausible as an immediate continuation following prior context (cross-word plausibility); the string AB was always implausible given the prior context, and the sentence continued in a manner that was compatible with A-BC. The results showed that there were longer second-pass reading times on the string ABC region in the cross-word plausible condition than those in the cross-word implausible condition in both the overlapping condition and the non-overlapping condition. These results imply that readers do not always integrate words strictly in the order in which they appear in Chinese reading.