ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a picture of what we currently know about health cognitions in young populations. In this chapter, the term cognition denotes "those personal thought processes that serve as frames of reference for ' organizing and evaluating experiences. Beliefs, expectations, perceptions, values, motives, and attitudes all provide the person with ways of filtering, interpreting, understanding, and predicting events" (Gochman, 1988b, p. 21). Health cognitions, then, refer broadly to those beliefs, expectations, perceptions, values, motives, and attitudes that serve as personal frames of reference for organizing and evaluating health, regardless of whether those cognitions have demonstrable empirical linkages with health status and regardless of whether they are "objectively valid."
