Joseph Glicksohn

Bar Ilan University | BIU · Department of Criminology

In a recent study employing time production, a number of participants presented aberrant data, which normally would have marked them as being outliers. Given the ongoing discussion in the literature regarding the illusory nature of the flow of time, in this paper we consider whether their data may indicate discontinuity in time perception. We analy...

Empathy is a fundamental social ability that allows humans to infer others’ emotions and intentions. Empathy is thought to be rooted in bodily sensations coming from the autonomic nervous system. In parallel, the functionality and perceptions coming from the autonomic nervous system could be improved by practicing activities that involve mind-body...

Do the Dark Triad and empathy (both cognitive and affective) appear in the same plane, at an angle of 180 degrees to each other? In order to test this hypothesis, we recruited both adolescents presenting with high-functioning ASD and those who were “neurotypical”. Each adolescent provided their self-report on the Basic Empathy Scale and the Dark Tr...

We investigated the predictive power of Psychoticism in distinguishing among five groups of individuals whose behavior should be reflective of Psychoticism: those presenting with psychopathology, creativity, or aggression. These five groups comprised: a group of 27 individuals suffering from mental disorders without a history of aggression, compare...

We present three methods by which outliers appearing in time production may be visually identified. Given the power function relating produced duration (P) to target duration (T), on log-transforming the data and then computing the linear regression of log(P) on log(T), the intercept and slope values are negatively correlated. Outliers in this scat...

Recent studies have established the degree of agreement for the detection of personality traits using composite images derived from individuals scoring ‘high’ or ‘low’ on these traits. The present study requested to re-examine these findings by presenting all possible combinations deriving from a Dark Trait (Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narci...

Time perception is closely related to spatial and bodily perception, yet little is known about how this interrelationship is impacted by meditation and biological sex. To examine this, we studied the effects of a stepwise application of three meditation techniques, from focused attention, to open monitoring to non-dual meditation, encompassed in th...

An altered sensory environment, especially a homogeneous one like a ganzfeld, can induce a wide range of experiences in people immersed in it. The ganzfeld of our current focus is the OVO Whole-Body Perceptual Deprivation chamber (OVO-WBPD). Previous literature has found this specific immersive environment to be capable of softening and dissolving...

If one accepts the notion of an internal clock, then one must further presume that time production (TP) is attuned with the rate of functioning of the clock’s pacemaker. As the level of environmental stimulation increases, TP of the same target durations should decrease; this is particularly the case when one is exposed to flicker. In the present e...

Objectives The present paper tests the cross-national stability of the HEXACO-60 structure across 18 countries from four continents. Gender and age differences across countries will be examined. Finally, this is the first study to explicitly analyze the relationships between the HEXACO and social position. Method 10,298 subjects (5,410 women and 4...

The Dark Triad traits of Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism should be clearly recognizable within a multidimensional personality space. Two such personality spaces were investigated in this study: HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience); and the Zuckerman-Kuhlman...

This chapter traces the intellectual history underlying the predominance of Gestalt Psychology in the Psychology of the Arts, arguing that the concept of gestalt becomes the foundation for the scholarship of literary scholars and art historians, as well as for psychologists studying the Arts. Studying the archives of the Gestalt psychologist Heinz...

In this chapter, there is a turn to the tradition of the English religious sonnet, in which Donne’s poem is discussed in relation to: “Prayer (I),” by the seventeenth-century Anglo-Welsh Metaphysical poet George Herbert; and “Now Stamp the Lord’s Prayer on a Grain of Rice,” from Dylan Thomas’s sonnet sequence “Altarwise by Owl-Light.” The sonnet is...

This chapter addresses the twentieth-century Modernist Hebrew poet Dan Pagis, who is also a literary scholar of Medieval and Early Modern Hebrew poetry. His poem is illuminated by a comparative discussion with two texts, both of which attracted Pagis’s scholarly attention: “The Mutes Will Speak Fluently” by the twelfth-century Hebrew poet Moses Ibn...

Donne’s “The Bait” is discussed in relation to the traditions of the English pastoral and piscatory lyrics. The pastoral lyric is represented by “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love,” written by the sixteenth-century English playwright and poet Christopher Marlow. Two contemporaneous exemplars of the piscatory lyric—by Robert Tofte and Edmund Spens...

In the poem “The Flea,” the seventeenth-century English Metaphysical poet John Donne integrates bestial (entomological), sexual and religious concepts. Donne’s poem is discussed in relationship to the tradition of Flea poetry as erotic discourse—most particularly by discussing two significant poems: the sixteenth-century poem “La Puce” by Étienne P...

The Gestalts of Mind and Text bridges literary studies and cognitive psychology to provide a unique contribution to the field of Cognitive Literary Studies. The book presents an investigation of metaphor in poetic texts, adopting and developing empirical methods used by Gestalt Psychology, while integrating concepts informed by Gestalt Psychology....

This chapter presents four aspects in discussing the poetic text and its metaphors: problem-solving and embodied cognition (Gestalt of the Mind); and bidirectionality and the grotesque (Gestalt of the Text). Problem-solving concerns the poem’s argument, selecting those specific metaphors that sustain the poetic text as a gestalt, and the representa...

This research explores the Dark Triad traits in 18 cultures from Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. We examined the relationships among Dark Triad traits, as measured by the SD3, with gender, age, social status, and two personality models, HEXACO and Zuckerman's alternative five factor model (AFFM). There were 10,298 participants (5,410 women and 4...

This chapter has two primary goals: first, to present a concise survey of scholarship on empirical studies of poetic metaphor; and second, to define several major issues seen in such empirical studies that can guide future research in this field. In the survey, we distinguish among three types of experimental methodology employed in this interdisci...

Our participants observed a series of degraded images of two artworks using a microgenetic method. What would be an observer’s response to a visual image depicting an act of violence? While the microgenetic method was expected to elicit aggressive ideation, two competing hypotheses were considered: (a) more aggressive content in the verbal reports,...

The empathizing-systemizing (E-S) cognitive styles advanced by Baron-Cohen refer to (1) empathizing (E), the ability to recognize another person's mental state and to respond with an appropriate emotion, and (2) systemizing (S), the drive to identify the rules that govern a system. We examine two implications of E-S cognitive styles: The relationsh...

Psychophysical well-being can be supported during development by the integration of extra-curricular activities in scholastic settings. These activities can be implemented in different forms, ranging from physical activities to sitting meditation practices. Considering that both such activities are thought to affect children’s psychophysical develo...

The importance of silence has been emphasized in both ancient and modern traditions (Teschner, 1981; Davies and Turner, 2002; Stratton, 2015). In Eastern traditions, silence has been linked to the inner stillness of the mind, a sense of equanimity and unity (Feuerstein, 1996; Lin et al., 2008). At the same time, Western scholars such as Kierkegaard...

Risk‐seeking is a characteristic that one attributes to a certain personality: Some individuals are risk‐seeking; others are risk‐aversive. Recreational risk‐seeking, implicates two personality traits: impulsivity and sensation seeking. Risk‐seeking can implicate antisocial behavior, especially if the activities engaged in are prohibited by law, su...

Risk‐seeking is a characteristic that one attributes to a certain personality: Some individuals are risk‐seeking; others are risk‐aversive. Recreational risk‐seeking, implicates two personality traits: impulsivity and sensation seeking. Risk‐seeking can implicate antisocial behavior, especially if the activities engaged in are prohibited by law, su...

Silence is an important aspect of various meditation practices, but little work has focused specifically on the underlying neurophysiology of silence-related meditative practice, and on how it relates to the self-reported experiences of practitioners. To expand current knowledge regarding the neurophenomenology of silence in meditation, we directly...

The Sphere Model of Consciousness (SMC) delineates a sphere-shaped matrix that aims to describe subjective experiences using geometric coordinates, in accordance with a neurophenomenological perspective. According to the SMC, an experience of overcoming the habitual self and the conditioning of memories could be placed at the center of the matrix,...

While it has been suggested that diagonal rhythmical bilateral movements promote improvement in motor and cognitive functions, no study that we are aware of has actually examined electrophysiological changes during diagonal movements. Therefore, we aimed to study cerebral activity during the performance of diagonal and vertical movements (DM and VM...

How do individuals rank body shapes? Does this relate to the body part one is most dissatisfied with? Our study investigates whether one can generalize regarding how women represent the body. Three BMI-calibrated images from the Photographic Figure Rating Scale, representative of thin (BMI = 14.72), medium (BMI = 20.33), and large (BMI = 29.26) sha...

Many traditions have utilized silent environments to induce altered states of consciousness and spiritual experiences. Neurocognitive explorations of spiritual experience can aid in understanding the underlying mechanism, but these are surprisingly rare. We present the verbal report and the electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha profile of a female pa...

It has been suggested that impulsivity is a core feature of psychopathy. However, certain findings in the research literature do not seem to mesh with this notion and suggest that primary and secondary variants of psychopathy may differ in their manifestation of impulsivity-related features. We carried out a correlational analysis and group compari...

EEG theta (4–7 Hz) activity is closely related to hypnosis and hypnotic analgesia, as well as to meditation and absorption. Research further indicates that theta oscillatory power is involved in different cognitive functions, such as spatial navigation, memory, creativity, and divided attention. The current manuscript will provide a synthesis of cu...

The current exploratory study was designed to examine whether an expert‐generated rating of the creativity of a product and of its darkness‐brightness would both be influenced by the mood of the participants who had created that product. Positive and negative moods of the participants were induced by watching an emotional video, followed by appropr...

The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Zuckerman–Kuhlman–Aluja Personality Questionnaire shortened form (ZKA-PQ/SF) in 18 cultures and 13 languages of different African, American, Asian, and European cultures and languages. The results showed that the five-factor structure with 20 facets replicated well across cultur...

Four states of consciousness are considered here: the hypnagogic state (the transitional state between waking and sleeping); the hypno- pompic state (the transitional state between sleeping and waking); lucid dreaming (insight to the fact that one is currently dreaming); and the out-of-the-body experience (perceiving the world from a location outsi...

The aim of our study was to examine the typical personality profiles of the Alternative Five Factor Model with its new factor-facet version questionnaire (Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire, 2010) on a large, cross-country database. The total sample of this study included 15,529 participants from 23 sub-samples from 22 countries and...

Over the last few years, several studies have investigated the possible effects of mindfulness meditation on time perception. Mindfulness meditation has been linked to both longer time production (TP) and increased bodily perception, and bodily processes are in turn thought to lie at the core of human time perception. Nevertheless, the connection b...

In the study of the electrophysiological correlates of attention, a phasic change in alertness has been classically related to a negative frontal-central shift called Contingent Negative Variation (CNV). Studies investigating the effects of meditation on the CNV in participants reporting frequent transcendental experiences (TE) reported reduced CNV...

Absorption, the ability to highly focus attention, as well as openness to self-altering experiences, is an important psychological construct, closely related to deep-meditation states and other altered states of consciousness. Yet, little is known about the electrophysiological profile of states of absorption, possibly due to the difficulty to indu...

Metaphor comprehension is not necessarily equivalent to metaphor production,nor do these necessarily refer to the same process. While both demand creative acts of cognition on the part of the reader and the poet, these are not necessarily the same type of creativity. Metaphor comprehension begins first with the target, as seen through the lens of t...

Time production (TP) with or without chronometric counting both instantiates and reflects the working of an internal clock, as originally posited by Treisman. We exploit the fact that a number of experienced meditators, who had previously participated in a study wherein TP was assessed, and who had employed chronometric counting then, would be comi...

Aquatic motor activity (AMA) has been reported to affect motor and cognitive abilities. However, the neural mechanisms that may mediate this relationship have never been explored. The traditional functions of the cerebellum include involvement in coordination and balance. Recent studies have shown cerebellar activity during verbal working memory (V...

Time estimation is an important component of the ability to organize and plan sequences of actions as well as cognitive functions, both of which are known to be altered in dyslexia. While attention deficits are accompanied by short Time Productions (TPs), expert meditators have been reported to produce longer durations, and this seems to be related...

Adolescence is a period that embodies great potential for growth and development in various aspects of life, and this is also a period of heightened vulnerability for risky behaviors. Normative increases in sensation seeking and risk-taking during adolescence, and peer influences on the expression of sensation seeking in risk-taking, will first be...

Objective: The Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire provides scores for the five dimensions of the Alternative 5, namely Extraversion, Neuroticism, Sensation Seeking, Aggressiveness, and Activity. What is the degree of interdependence among these five traits (dimensions) of the ZKA-PQ? What do we know about the internal structure of th...

Most research on the relation between psychopathy and intelligence has been conducted with incarcerated male samples. However, psychopathic traits can be found among non-incarcerated individuals, male or female, possessing high intellectual capacities. The construct of psychopathy has been comparatively understudied in women. We hypothesized a posi...

Divergent thinking (DT) is positively affected by aerobic exercise. Coordinative training also benefits cognitive functioning, but its association with DT is in need of research. Among different types of coordination-demanding physical activity, Mindful Movements (MMs) practices are specific types of training that can have a join impact on DT and i...

In the current article, we will bring forth the subject of embodied symbols and discuss the possible underlying neuronal mechanisms mediating the comprehension of these symbols, focusing on the motor system. We will focus on three main examples, related to (1) structures (such as the labyrinth), (2) visual stimuli (e.g., sculptures) and (3) embodie...

The notion that exposure to a monotonous sensory environment could elicit reports indicating aberrant subjective experience and altered time perception is the impetus for the present report. Research has looked at the influence of exposure to such environments on time perception, reporting that the greater the environmental variation, the shorter i...

The aim of this study was to analyze the validity structure, alpha internal consistency and the generalized applicability of the ZKA-PQ/SF in 17 different cultures and 11 languages (Belgium, Bosnia, Catalonia, Chile, China, Germany, Hungary, Israel, I t al y, Qatar, Senegal, Spain, Switzerland (French), Switzerland (Germany), Togo, Tunis and USA);...

The aim of this study was to analyze the validity structure, alpha internal consistency and the generalized applicability of the ZKA-PQ/SF in 17 different cultures and 11 languages (Belgium, Bosnia, Catalonia, Chile, China, Germany, Hungary, Israel, I t al y, Qatar, Senegal, Spain, Switzerland (French), Switzerland (Germany), Togo, Tunis and USA);...

It is becoming increasingly accepted that creative performance, especially divergent thinking, may depend on reduced activity within the default mode network (DMN), related to mind-wandering and autobiographic self-referential processing. However, the relationship between trait (resting-state) DMN activity and divergent thinking is controversial. H...

The scientific study of movement-related contemplative practices has proceeded without much attention to the range of psychological and phenomenological changes thought to occur during the practice. Quadrato Motor Training (QMT) is a specifically structured walking meditation, recently found to improve creativity and reflectivity, as well as neurop...

In this paper, we relate meditation practice to participant trait absorption, affect, and transcendent experience. The motivation for this analysis stems from a new neurophenomenological model of consciousness which we recently published, named the consciousness state space. Here, we compare two distinct forms of meditation: mindfulness and transce...

In the introduction to his 1912 edition of John Donne s poetry, Herbert J. C. Grierson writes of "the vein of sheer ugliness which runs through his work, presenting details that seem merely and wantonly repulsive." What is more, Donne displays what Samuel Johnson argues is "a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images." Through b...

The authors first present the interaction theory of metaphor, emphasizing its notion of bidirectionality. They then discuss the relationship between bidirectionality and blending, making explicit the different expectations regarding bidirectionality deriving from interaction theory and blending theory. With this as a suitable background for this sp...

Fifty years ago, in their first meeting, Hans Eysenck and Marvin Zuckerman agreed that research was needed to clarify the relationships between Eysenck's Big Three (E = Extraversion, N = Neuroticism, and P = Psychoticism) and both impulsivity and sensation seeking. In later years, both Eysenck and Zuckerman agreed in their various publications, tha...

In the neuropsychological literature, there is a debate concerning whether neuropsychological tests necessarily are better means for assessing impulsivity than are trait measures. Yet, there is an inherent problem in looking at these test results: Cognitive impulsivity (i.e. impulsive performance on a standard task, assessed looking at the speed-ac...

We present a profile of male pilots having extensive flying experience, all of whom had been trained in the military. They completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised, short version, and the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS), Form V; they then completed the Group Embedded Figures Task. On comparing the data of the pilots to both population...

In this study, we investigate how our participants grapple with the inherent uncertainty of a visual hybrid, when presented as a sequential presentation of degraded and brief images. We argue that this uncertainty should lead to readily observable anxiety. A total of 44 students participated in this microgenetic study, employing 4 visual hybrids, e...

Adolescents with eating disorders (ED) suffer from deficits in executive functions and "theory of mind." It is unclear whether these indicate state or trait characteristics. We examined cognitive functioning in 150 adolescents, comparing those at high risk and those not at risk for ED. Deficits in set shifting and in theory of mind were found in al...

Several personality models are known for being replicable across cultures, such as the Five-Factor Model (FFM) or Eysenck's Psychoticism–Extraversion–Neuroticism (PEN) model, and are for this reason considered universal. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the cross-cultural replicability of the recently revised Alternative FFM (AFFM). A t...

When depression alternates with mania, as in a bipolar affective disorder, creativity might be enhanced. To investigate this, we employed a single-subject design, looking at both affective space and the spectral covariation of mood and creativity in a participant presenting with bipolar affective disorder. The study was conducted over a period of 5...

The importance of the cerebellum is increasingly recognized, not only in motor control but also in cognitive learning and function. Nevertheless, the relationship between training-induced cerebellar activation and electrophysiological and structural changes in humans has yet to be established. In the current paper, we suggest a general model tying...

Quadrato Motor Training (QMT) is a whole-body movement contemplative practice aimed at increasing health and well-being. Previous research studying the effect of one QMT session suggested that one of its means for promoting health is by enhancing cognitive flexibility, an important dimension of creativity. Yet, little is known about the effect of a...

The default mode network (DMN) has been largely studied by imaging, but not yet by neurodynamics, using electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity (FC). mindfulness meditation (MM), a receptive, non-elaborative training is theorized to lower DMN activity. We explored: (i) the usefulness of EEG-FC for investigating the DMN and (ii) the MM-...

Our goal in this paper is to show that a careful analysis of recall accuracy within a serial reproduction chain can add to a detailed qualitative analysis of the reproductions within the chain. The texts we chose are based on newspaper reports concerning current events, which are far from being mundane: reports of tragic events, even traumatic even...

Dyslexia is a multifactorial reading deficit that involves multiple brain systems. Among other theories, it has been suggested that cerebellar dysfunction may be involved in dyslexia. This theory has been supported by findings from anatomical and functional imaging. A possible rationale for cerebellar involvement in dyslexia could lie in the cerebe...

Every experience, those we are aware of and those we are not, is embedded in a subjective timeline, is tinged with emotion, and inevitably evokes a certain sense of self. Here, we present a phenomenological model for consciousness and selfhood which relates time, awareness, and emotion within one framework. The consciousness state space (CSS) model...

Quadrato Motor Training (QMT) is a specifically-structured walking meditation, aimed at improving reflectivity and lowering habitual thought and movement. Here we set out to examine the possible effect of QMT on reflectivity, employing the Hidden Figures Test (HFT), which assesses both spatial performance (measured by correct answers) as well as re...

Meditation practice can lead to what have been referred to as “altered states of consciousness.”One of the phenomenological characteristics of these states is a joint alteration in the sense of time, space, and body. Here, we set out to study the unique experiences of alteration in the sense of time and space by collaborating with a select group of...

Purpose To compare theoretical explanations of the age-versatility curve including the hypotheses of: self-control theory stating that versatility is followed by specialization; taxonomic theory stating that adolescent-limited offenders are specialists and life-course offenders are versatile and orthogenetic theory stating that specialization and v...

Many personality traits are popular sources of research for a short time, and then, like the constructs on which they are based, they gradually fade away. In contrast, Sensation Seeking (otherwise known as Novelty Seeking, Arousal Seeking, Excitement Seeking, and other “seeking” labels) has had a steady increase in citations over the half century s...

Contemporary philosophical and neurocognitive studies of the self have dissociated two distinct types of self-awareness: a “narrative” self-awareness (NS) weaving together episodic memory, future planning and self-evaluation into a coherent self-narrative and identity, and a “minimal” self-awareness (MS) focused on present momentary experience and...