Lucid dreaming is common in young children, with its incidence dropping around age 16. A survey of students aged 6-19 found that those in higher-level schools reported more lucid dreams than those in lower-level schools. The authors propose a link between the natural occurrence of lucid dreaming and brain maturation, considering methodological issues.
Dream reports collected after REM sleep describe more physical movement by the dreamer, while hypnagogic hallucinations (the imagery experienced just before falling asleep) are mostly experienced passively, as an observer. The findings come from linguistic analysis of reports given immediately after EEG-monitored periods of hypnagogia and REM sleep in a sleep laboratory. The method, called Activity Analysis, quantifies the level of simulated motor activity in subjective reports. This approach could be used to study altered activity levels in conditions such as depression or PTSD.
A new scale, the Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams scale (LuCiD), distinguishes lucid from non-lucid dreams using eight factors: INSIGHT, CONTROL, THOUGHT, REALISM, MEMORY, DISSOCIATION, NEGATIVE EMOTION, and POSITIVE EMOTION. While all factors relate to dream consciousness, realism and negative emotion do not differ between lucid and non-lucid dreams, indicating that lucid insight is separate from dream bizarreness or changes in subjective realism. The scale was developed through exploratory factor analysis on data from a first survey and validated with confirmatory factor analysis on a second survey.