A body of experimental research has aimed to investigate processes underlying dream formation by examining the effects of a range of pre-sleep stimuli and events on subsequent dream content. Given its ever-growing presence and salience in people's everyday lives, pre-sleep media consumption stands out as a key variable that could influence people's dreams. We conducted a scoping review to...
Although disturbing dreams are prevalent in youth and are associated with psychopathology, little is known about their developmental course and risk factors. We aimed to examine the association between early social environment and subsequent disturbing dream frequency across adolescence as moderated by early negative emotionality. Measures of children's early social environment and negative...
Abstract: The study of sleep and wakefulness can inform debates about the nature of consciousness. We argue that sleep and wakefulness fall along a multidimensional continuum and that inconsistencies and paradoxes with the accounts put forth by Merker et al. and Tononi can be understood in terms of a pervasive false dichotomy between these two states.
The retrospective nature of dream reports represents a challenge to the study of dreams. Two-way, real-time communication between researchers and lucid dreamers immersed in REM sleep offers a new and exciting window into the study of dreams and dreaming.
Erotic dreams are common, but the ways in which they reflect waking day romantic relationships remain understudied. We examined the targets of erotic dreams reported by 470 men and 575 women in a romantic relationship as well as the associations between these targets and measures of couple and sexual life. Over 95% of all participants reported having erotic dreams. Women were more likely than...
Although emotions are reported in a large majority of dreams, little is known about the factors that account for night-to-night and person-to-person variations in people's experience of dream affect. We investigated the relationship between waking trait and state variables and dream affect by testing multilevel models intended to predict the affective valence of people's everyday dreams....
SleepApril 28, 2017Cristina Banu, Pierre McDuff, Antonio Zadra1 citation
The present study tested a prediction from Levin and Nielsen’s (2007) neurocognitive model of disturbed dreaming stipulating that variations in the frequency of bad dreams and nightmares are partly determined by day-to-day variations in emotional stress. The model also suggests that relations between dreams and stress may vary as a function of personality traits. 224 adults (186F, 38M, mean...
Studies on children's recurrent dreams have been largely anecdotal and based on adults' recollections of dreams experienced during childhood. We collected 102 reports of recurrent dreams from a sample of young adolescents aged between 11 and 15years and scored the narratives using a range of content measures, including in relation to the threat simulation theory (TST) of dreaming. The most...
Objectives: To explore the relationship between occurrence of drug dreams (DDs) and daytime negative affect and drug craving during the course of a 5-week treatment program for substance dependence. Methods: Using the dream journal methodology, 86 participants reported occurrence of dreams, dream content, and ratings of affect and drug craving. The relationships between the experience of DD,...
While many studies have examined the aetiological underpinnings and psychological correlates of nightmares, very few have focused on laypeople’s conceptions of the underlying causes of their own nightmares. The present study investigated laypeople’s causal beliefs about their worst nightmare experience and examined whether these beliefs varied as a function of participants’ gender, age of...
Relatively little is known about nightmares and other forms of disturbed dreaming in children. This article reviews the literature on the prevalence and correlates of nightmares in children and highlights key methodological issues in the field. Results show that regardless of how they are defined and measured, nightmares affect a significant proportion of children of all ages and there is some...
Study objectives: To conduct a comprehensive and comparative study of prospectively collected bad dream and nightmare reports using a broad range of dream content variables. Design: Correlational and descriptive. Setting: Participants' homes. Participants: Three hundred thirty-one adult volunteers (55 men, 275 women, 1 not specified; mean age = 32.4 ± 14.8 y). Interventions: N/A. Measurement...
This study investigated the relationships between a history of childhood maltreatment, the frequency of disturbing dreams, their associated distress, and the presence of psychopathology in 352 female undergraduate volunteers. Participants completed questionnaires assessing dream recall, bad dream and nightmare frequency, nightmare distress, psychological well-being, and history of childhood...
Significant individual differences exist in dream recall frequency (DRF) but some variance is likely attributable to instrument choice in measuring DRF. Three hundred and fifty eight participants estimated their weekly DRF and recorded their dreams in either a narrative log (n = 165) or checklist log (n = 193) for 2-5 weeks. There was an early peak in DRF within the first week of both types of...
This study examined the laboratory dream content reported by 14 patients with schizophrenia and 15 controls, with a focus on reports obtained from NonREM sleep. Both the controls' and patients' frequency of dream recall following awakenings from NonREM and REM sleep were similar to values reported for healthy participants. Patients' NonREM sleep narratives were shorter than those from controls....
BACKGROUND: Lucid dreams occur when a person becomes aware that he or she is dreaming while still in the dream state. Previous reports on the use of lucid dreaming in the treatment of nightmares do not contain adequate baseline data, follow-up data, or both. METHODS: A treatment of recurrent nightmares incorporating progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, and lucid dream induction is...
Many clinical, laboratory and non-laboratory studies have examined dream content reported by patients with schizophrenia but findings have been variable and inconsistent. Using both questionnaire-based measures and laboratory REM sleep awakenings, we investigated dream content in 14 patients with schizophrenia (mean age=25.5+/-3.2 years) under atypical antipsychotic medication and 15 healthy...
Studies on nightmare frequency have yielded inconsistent results. We compared the frequency of nightmares and bad dreams obtained with retrospective methods (annual and monthly estimates) and with two types of prospective measures (narrative and checklist logs). Four hundred and eleven participants completed retrospective estimates of nightmare and bad dream frequency and recorded their dreams...
Many studies have reported positive correlations between dream recall frequency (DRF) and measures of absorption, psychological boundaries and attitude towards dreams. A majority of these studies, however, have relied exclusively on retrospective measures of DRF even though daily dream logs are generally considered to be more direct and valid measures of DRF. The first goal of the present...
proposed an intriguing and detailed evolutionary theory of dreams which stipulates that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat avoidance behaviors. The goal of the present study was to test this theory using a sample of 212 recurrent dreams that was scored using a slightly expanded version of the DreamThreat rating scale. Six of the eight...
Nightmares are usually defined as frightening dreams that awaken the sleeper. This study uses the waking criterion to distinguish between nightmares and bad dreams and investigated the variety and intensity of emotions reported in each form of disturbing dream. Ninety participants recorded their dreams for 4 consecutive weeks and, for each dream recalled, noted the emotions present and their...
Problems with nightmares are reported by a sizable proportion of individuals with a history of trauma and by approximately 5% to 8% of the general population. Chronic nightmares may represent a primary sleep disorder rather than a symptom of a psychiatric disorder, and direct targeting of nightmares is a feasible clinical approach to the problem. Of the treatments proposed, imagery rehearsal...
This longitudinal study tested the continuity hypothesis, which postulates that waking states and concerns are reflected in dreams. The relationship between dream content and negative waking affect was investigated both at fixed points in time and over a 6- to 10-year period. Twenty-eight participants completed measures of psychological well-being (PWB) and kept a dream log at two periods of...
Exposure, abreaction, and mastery have been proposed as the therapeutic processes of nightmare (NM) reduction. Imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) effectively reduces NMs but involves minimal exposure and abreaction. The authors investigated the use of mastery in the scripting of new dreams (NDs) elaborated during IRT. NM an dN D reports were collected from 44 female sexual assault survivors with...
Although numerous studies have investigated the content of laboratory and home dream reports, surprisingly little is known about the prevalence of various sensory modes in dreams. 49 men and 115 women completed a battery of questionnaires and kept a home dream diary for two to three consecutive weeks. Retrospective responses to the questionnaire indicate that approximately 33% of men and 40% of...