Word order encoding in Chinese reading: Investigating the transposed-word effect across different presentation modes

The transposed-word effect, where readers misperceive transposed-word sentences as grammatical, has been central to the debate between parallel and serial processing accounts of reading. While parallel processing accounts attribute this effect to simultaneous word activation, evidence from serial presentations challenges this assumption. In this study, sixty-six native Chinese readers completed a grammaticality judgment task on Chinese sentences under three presentation modes: parallel, horizontal serial, and central serial, with eye tracking used to control for reading time and spatial information. The results showed a robust transposed-word effect in all presentation modes, with larger effect sizes for error rates in parallel compared to both serial presentations (central and horizontal), and for response times in parallel and horizontal serial compared to central serial. These findings provide further support for serial accounts of lexical processing in which word-order encoding remains flexible and highlight the influence of spatial position and word availability on this process.