The kaleidoscope of bizarreness: The analysis of first-person-reports shows the relationship between dreaming and mind wandering to be complex.
Manuela Kirberg, Jennifer Windt
Consciousness and Cognition 2026 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2025.103965 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 379 |
| Population | Spontaneous reports from the same group of participants |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Bizarreness Content analysis First-person reports Mind wandering Spontaneous thought |
| Key findings | Dreaming and waking mind wandering have unique bizarreness profiles that vary by measurement type, so dreams are not straightforwardly intensified mind wandering. |
Abstract
Spontaneous thoughts and experiences, including mind wandering and dreaming, make up a significant proportion of our conscious mental lives. An influential proposal posits that dreaming and mind wandering exist on a continuum of spontaneous thought, in which dreaming is intensified compared to mind wandering. Yet the precise relationship between dreaming and mind wandering is only beginning to be investigated. Unusual features of dream experience, referred to as bizarreness, are at the heart of theoretical debates about the relationship between dreaming and waking experiences. Traditionally, bizarreness was considered as a distinctive and pervasive feature of dreaming that was absent in waking consciousness, whereas recently, it has been proposed as a dimension along which dreaming is an intensified form of waking mind wandering. Our study is the first to apply an in-depth bizarreness analysis to dreaming and mind wandering reports from the same group of participants within a naturalistic setting. Our results, based on 379 spontaneous reports, suggest that both dreaming and waking mind wandering, have unique bizarreness profiles, involving similarities as well as distinctive differences. Bizarreness is kaleidoscopic in that the comparison between dreaming and mind wandering changes with the precise rating and level of measure (bizarreness type, subtypes, contents) used. This means that dreams cannot, straightforwardly, be described as intensified compared to waking mind wandering on measures of bizarreness, and a more nuanced account, alongside more specific measures, is needed. We propose that our findings can inform and guide future work not just on bizarreness in dreams and mind wandering, but also more broadly on the relationship between conscious experiences in sleep and wakefulness.
Comparable studies
Other observational and cohort studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lucid Dreaming: a State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming Student volunteers trained to become lucid and signal lucidity with horizontal eye... | 2009 | Observational study | n = 6 |
| Nightmare Prevalence, Nightmare Distress, and Self-Reported Psychological Disturbance Young adults with a mean age of 20 years | 2002 | Prospective observational study | n = 116 |
| Long-term effects of extreme situational stress on sleep and dreaming Survivors of traumatic events who complained of sleep disturbances, compared with... | 1987 | Case-control study | n = 11 |
| The relationship of nightmare frequency and nightmare distress to well‐being Adults who reported dreams | 2004 | Observational cohort | n = 147 |
| Dreaming in NREM Sleep: A High-Density EEG Study of Slow Waves and Spindles Healthy human subjects | 2018 | Observational cohort | n = 14 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 2
Cites 17
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- The Phenomenal Contents and Neural Correlates of Spontaneous Thoughts across Wakefulness, NREM Sleep, and REM Sleep Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience May 31, 2017
and 12 more in the library