Many researchers and clinicians are diagnosing depressed children according to criteria resembling those used to diagnose depressed adults. To investigate cognitive correlates of depression in children two studies were conducted. In the first study 37 children in grades 5-7 were given a booklet containing the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Children's Cognitive Distortion Task (CCDT) minus titles. Results indicated that the degree of depression manifested by children as measured by the CDI was positively correlated with their endorsement of depressed, distorted responses, and negatively correlated with their endorsement on nondepressed, nondistorted responses on the CCDT. The second study was part of a larger investigation examining the relationship of selected situational and subject variables (one of which was depressive status, as measured by the Personality Inventory for Children Depression Scale) to school children's role-played assertive behavior and concurrent self-statements. The results indicated that relatively depressed children's self-statements (N=32) were less facilitative of assertion than those of nondepressed children (N=32). The depressed children differed in particular by thinking more assertion-inhibiting thoughts. Analyses of overt behavior scores yielded mixed results regarding the presence of assertion deficits in depressed children. The results of both studies lend support to the practice of extrapolating from research and theory on depression in adults, specifically, cognitive theory and research, to childhood depression. (Author/LLL)