Frequency and complexity(number of strokes) of a Chinese word are key factors determining whether,and for how long,readers fixate that word in normal reading.However,it is not clear whether the two properties of a word influence eye movement measures on adjacent words as well.We monitored eye movements of native Chinese readers when they read sentences containing verb-noun pairs,and orthogonally manipulated frequency (high or low frequency) and complexity (high or low complexity) of a 2-character verb which immediately preceded a 2-character noun.The results showed that word frequency played a pivotal and an immediate role in Chinese reading,with shorter and fewer fixations on high-frequency than on low-frequency verbs.Visual complexity also affected word processing immediately,with shorter fixations and higher skipping probability on low-complexity than on high-complexity verbs.There was no immediate but delayed interaction between word frequency and complexity,specifically readers made longer and more fixations onnouns when verbs were of low-frequency and low-complexity than those of low-frequency and high-complexity,which showed a reversed and delayed complexity effect.This effect might be due to the fact that less complex words usually have more higher-frequency-neighbors (i.e.,competitors),thus slow down later stages of lexical access,as per Pollatsek,Juhasz,Reichle,Machacek and Rayner (2008).