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Recent efforts at measuring cognitions relevant to depression have yielded a number of measures. In the first part of this study a battery of cognitive assessment measures were contrasted using three subject groups (major depressed patients, nondepressed psychiatric, and nonpsychiatric hospital patients). The results strongly support the existence of a correlated set of cognitions specific to depression. Several measures of cognition during the depressive episode correlated uniformly with severity of depression, and for the most part scores of depressed subjects were significantly different from the two control groups. The second part of the study explored the stability of cognition in a sample of depressed inpatients. Using the battery of cognitive assessment methods, the results indicate marked stability of scores while the person remains depressed. With a sample of remitted patients, changes in cognition …