We examined the relationship between loneliness and life satisfaction in 121 residents of Fukoku, Japan, and 139 residents of Melbourne, Australia, using the Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1983) and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980). Australian subjects reported significantly less loneliness and significantly greater life satisfaction than Japanese subjects. A high inverse correlation was found between loneliness and life satisfaction in Australian subjects, with a much smaller inverse relationship observed among the Japanese, suggesting that loneliness in Japanese subjects did not emotionally translate into life dissatisfaction as it did in Australian subjects. Instead, the experience of loneliness in Japanese individuals may remain largely independent of general life satisfaction.

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Although the Bender Gestalt Visual Motor Test has been used across cultures, evidence indicates that performance may be related to differences in experience including exposure to Western acculturation. Thus in Papua New Guinea (PNG), with relatively recent exposure to Western systems of education, it might be expected, particularly in view of available cognitive research data, that performance would lag somewhat by comparison with norms from American or other Western samples. Thus normative data for PNG is required before the V.M.T. may be systematically used for diagnostic work. The present paper describes the V.M.T. performance of 245 children from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and 74 Australian children living in the same area. V.M.T. scores were compared also with American data. Consistent with the research on cognitive development in the literature, V.M.T. scores for the PNG children seemed to be about three to four years delayed, though the same kind of decrease in error scores with chronological age was evident.

Three hundred and thirty‐nine primary level boys and girls from the Jimi Valley area of the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea were tested for conservation of four concepts, number, length, quantity, and area. Schooling, age and sex were related to conservation with some concepts, and there were interaction effects between schooling and age. When compared with other studies the results suggest that there may be considerable differences between language‐culture groups within Papua New Guinea, and that the Jimi children themselves show a lag of several years, a lag which increases with the difficulty of the concept tested, in achieving the concepts tested when compared with children from more developed countries.

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