The consequences of violations to reading order: an eye movement analysis

Adjective-Noun and Noun-Adjective sequences inspected with single fixations in the French part of the Dundee Corpus were examined. Violations to canonical reading order produced significant effects on average inspection time, but only for fixations on the two words concerned and the immediately following fixation. Extended analyses on both English and French data sets also show local consequences of violations to reading order, but only very limited evidence of longer-lasting effects on wrap-up. The fact that a failure to maintain a strict left-right serial reading order seems not to result in significant processing disruption poses a challenge to current models of eye movement control in reading.