A Novel Approach to Dream Content Analysis Reveals Links Between Learning-Related Dream Incorporation and Cognitive Abilities
Frontiers in Psychology August 6, 2018 Stuart Fogel, L. Bryan Ray, Valya Sergeeva et al. 37 citations
The extent to which newly learned material is incorporated into dreams is related to individual differences in cognitive abilities. Using a computational linguistic approach to measure semantic similarity between waking experiences and dream reports, the study found that the richness of incorporation of a spatial or motor memory task into early hypnagogic dreams correlated with reasoning abilities (r=0.41), while incorporation into later dreams correlated with verbal abilities (r=0.46). Memory performance improvements were related to dream incorporation (r=0.47) for early but not late dreams, but this relationship was not mediated by cognitive abilities, suggesting a direct link between reasoning and dream incorporation.