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Prayer is a behavior that is performed by most people at least at some time, and yet social scientists appear to have neglected this topic. College students were interviewed, given the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status, and asked to keep 7-day diaries about their prayer activities, whether spontaneous or formal. Correlational analyses revealed a relationship between identity status and frequency of praying, as well as between identity status and commitment to religion. A qualitative analysis of the diary data suggested that prayer may be a revealing approach to the psychosocial lives of late adolescents, including their central concerns, temporal orientation, and the social bounds of their definition of self.

An understanding of the health beliefs and values of young adolescents is important both theoretically and practically. Besides adding to the body of information about cognitive development in general, such information can be of practical value to the health care professional. In the current study three questions were addressed: the accuracy of children's ratings of their own health, the ascriptive quality of their health values, and the content of their health concerns. Twenty-three seventh-grade students were found to agree closely with their parents' ratings of their health and recall of their illnesses. The subjects' health values were significantly different from their parents' values both in content and ascriptive quality.

The perceptual stability of visual targets in the left vs. right visual fields was investigated by having Ss report the perceptual fragmentation of dim stimuli. The right visual field was found more stable than the left. This difference was not related to handedness but was significantly related to ocular dominance. Monocular results yielded significant laterality differences for the left eye, but not the right eye. An interpretation based on sensory cerebral dominance and retinal sensitivity was advanced to account for the results.

Depression, a clinical diagnosis of long standing in adult psychopathology, has recently emerged as a major diagnostic consideration in the treatment of children. However, disagreement is still widespread among researchers as to the existence of depression in children. As recently as 1978, Lefkowitz and Burton argued that there was no evidence of a syndrome of childhood depression because (a) “these same symptoms of depression prevail at a rate too high to be considered statistically deviant” (p. 724), (b) there is no reliable and valid psychometric assessment tool available for use with children, and (c) the symptoms themselves show marked variation with age and many of them dissipate over time without treatment. The authors warned against precipitous diagnosis of a condition which may not be pathological.

When a subject fixates on a luminous design under conditions of low illumination, he experiences a fragmenting disappearance of the figure. This fragmentation occurs in meaningful units and is comparable to the disappearance of images stabilized on the retina. The luminous paint technique offers a new and simple approach to the study of visual perception.

Visual targets of low intensity fragment and disappear when fixated in the dark. The present study uses this phenomenon to study the relative perceptual stability of the left and right visual fields. Results indicate a right field superiority.