Abstract: Visual word recognition and the effects of context on it have been a crucial issue in linguistic psychology and cognitive psychology. The eye-tracking method and event-related potentials are combined to examine the processes of Chinese word identification. In the six experiments, we investigated the activation of phonology and orthography during Chinese sentences reading by manipulating the constraint of sentence on the target words. In addition, we explored the resolution of ambiguous word in different biased sentence context. The results showed the influences of sentence context on word recognition and provided the example of combining eye-tracking method and ERP technology in language cognition.

Key words: sentence context, Chinese reading, word recognition, eye movements, event-related potentials