Dream reports from 16 subjects across an experimental night were analyzed using story grammar criteria. Reports from the second half of the night were longer and more complex due to more effective dream production, not better recall. This increase involved better organization of individual stories rather than more stories per time period. The findings raise questions about how dream production is re-triggered during REM sleep and whether themes across stories in a dream are interrelated.
Sleep improves memory retention compared to waking, but the mechanisms remain unclear—whether due to reduced interference, slowed decay, or active consolidation. Recent evidence from dream studies suggests consolidation occurs during sleep: items repeatedly accessed and woven into ongoing dreams are better retained at delayed recall. The authors propose extending these information-processing strategies to sleep-disturbed individuals to examine how sleep disturbances affect memory during sleep.