FREQUENTLY when an Israeli provides travel information in Hebrew, he points in one direction while simultaneously naming its opposite, for example he points to the left while saying: “You must turn right”. When this contradictory behaviour is brought to his attention, he excuses himself and either points in the direction he had verbally indicated or corrects his error by changing the verbal expression to correspond with the physical. Observation of such verbal–spatial dissociation prompted the following experiments to explore systematically the possibility that Israelis make more errors in response to questions relating to left–right orientation than do non-Israelis.