This paper reports two studies that investigate differences in comprehension monitoring skills between good and poor comprehenders. Two groups of 9-to 10-year-olds, who were matched for reading vocabulary and word recognition skills but who differed in comprehension skill, were selected. In the first study, in which the children were required to find anomalous words and phrases, the skilled comprehenders engaged in more accurate monitoring of sentence level anomalies (but not word level anomalies) than did the poorer comprehenders. In the second study, the comprehension monitoring task required the children to detect pairs of sentences, in short texts, that were contradictory. In addition, the working memory demands of the task were varied by placing the two items of inconsistent information either in adjacent sentences, or in sentences that were separated in the text by several others. As in the first study, less-skilled comprehenders performed more poorly on the detection task, but the difference between the groups was considerably more pronounced when the sentences were separated than when they were adjacent. In addition, the children were given a numerical working memory test, and the poorer comprehenders performed more poorly on this test. However, although working memory performance was related to performance on some of the error detection tasks, comprehension ability was also a good, and sometimes better, predictor. The results are discussed in terms of the different cognitive abilities that might contribute to efficient comprehension monitoring.

Objective: This study of bulimic women examined the relationship between the severity of four forms of reported child abuse (emotional abuse, neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse) and bulimic pathology. In addition, it investigated the relationship of abuse with dissociation and core beliefs. Method: A sample of 23 women with bulimic disorders completed standardized self-report measures of child abuse, dissociation, core beliefs, and bulimic symptomatology. They also completed diary records of bulimic behaviors. Results: No dimensional relationship was found between any form of child abuse and bulimic pathology. However, within this group of bulimics, neglect and sexual abuse were correlated with dissociation. In addition, a subset of core beliefs was associated with child abuse, with different cognitive profiles associated with each form of trauma. Conclusions:The findings need to be interpreted with caution because of the small, heterogeneous sample involved. Further research involving larger, homogenous samples is needed to investigate the generalizability of these findings, in order to determine if particular abusive experiences and core beliefs need to be addressed therapeutically in such cases. In addition, future research should consider the relationships between abuse, core beliefs and other impulsive behaviors.