Dream recall frequency: impact of prospective measures and motivational factors.
Consciousness and Cognition December 1, 2012 Antonio Zadra, Geneviève Robert
People differ widely in how often they recall dreams, and part of that variation may come from how recall is measured. In a study of 358 participants who estimated their weekly dream recall and then kept either a narrative log (165 people) or a checklist log (193 people) for 2–5 weeks, dream recall frequency peaked early in the first week for both log types and then stayed stable. The two groups did not differ in their estimated recall, but narrative logs produced significantly fewer reported dreams per week. Only checklist logs yielded significantly higher recall than participants' initial questionnaire estimates. The pattern held across people with low, medium, or high baseline recall.