Recent research has demonstrated transference in social perception, defined in terms of memory and schema-triggered evaluation in relation to a new person (S. M. Andersen & A. B. Baum, 1994; S. M. Andersen & S. W. Cole, 1990; S. M. Andersen, N. S. Glassman, S. Chen, & S. W. Cole, 1995). The authors examined schema-triggered facial affect in transference, along with motivations and expectancies. In a nomothetic experimental design, participants encountered stimulus descriptors of a new target person that were derived either from their own idiographic descriptions of a positively toned or a negatively toned significant other or from a yoked control participant's descriptors. Equal numbers of positive and negative target descriptors were presented, regardless of the overall tone of the representation. The results verified the memory effect and schema-triggered evaluation in transference, on the basis of significant-other resemblance in the target person. Of importance, participants' nonverbal expression of facial affect when learning about the target person (i.e., at encoding) reflected the overall tone of their significant-other representation under the condition of significant-other resemblance, providing strong support for schema-triggered affect in transference, through the use of this unobtrusive, nonverbal measure. Parallel effects on interpersonal closeness motivation and expectancies for acceptance/rejection in transference also emerged.

We assessed aspects of the reliability and validity of three measures of social-cognitive processing in children that have been developed to investigate the relations of such processes to childhood depression: the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ), the Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ), and the Common Beliefs Inventory for Students (CBIS). In an unselected sample of 61 children, aged 8 to 12, the internal consistencies of the total scores on the CNCEQ and the CBIS were good; for the CASQ, it was only moderate. Internal consistencies of all subscale scores were inadequate. Despite this, several subscale and total scores were significantly associated with depressive symptoms, and the measures were generally correlated with each other. Although these data are encouraging concerning the role of social-cognitive processing in childhood depression, the field needs to develop psychometrically stronger measures and to test the role of social cognition in prospective studies of depression.

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