Dream Content Discovery from Social Media Using AI
Anubhab Das, Sanja Šćepanović, Luca Maria Aiello, Remington Mallett, Deirdre Barrett, Daniele Quercia
preprint DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4549419/v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 44,213 |
| Population | Dream reports from Reddit's r/dreams subreddit |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key findings | A new natural language processing method identified 217 dream topics in 22 themes from 44,213 Reddit dream reports, revealing patterns and changes in collective dreaming over time and around major events. |
Abstract
Abstract Dreaming is a fundamental but not fully understood part of human experience. Traditional dream content analysis practices, while popular and aided by over 130 unique scales and rating systems, have limitations. Often based on retrospective surveys or lab studies, and sometimes on in-home dream reports collected over some days, they struggle to be applied on a large scale or to show the importance and connections between different dream themes. To overcome these issues, we developed a new, data-driven mixed-method approach for identifying topics in free-form dream reports through natural language processing. We applied this method on 44,213 dream reports from Reddit's \rdreams subreddit, where we uncovered 217 topics, grouped into 22 larger themes: the most extensive collection of dream topics to date. We validated our topics by comparing it to the widely-used Hall and van de Castle scale. Going beyond traditional scales, our method can find unique patterns in different dream types (like nightmares or recurring dreams), understand topic importance and connections (like finding a greater predominance of indoor location settings in Reddit dreams than what was in general stipulated by previous work), and observe changes in collective dream experiences over time and around major events (like the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent Russo-Ukrainian war). We envision that the applications of our method will provide valuable insights into the complex nature of dreaming and its interplay with our waking experiences.
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 |
| The prevalence of nightmares and their independence from anxiety. Undergraduates | 1990 | Observational study using daily dream logs | n = 220 |
Citations in the library
Cites 27
- The relationship of nightmare frequency and nightmare distress to well‐being Journal of Sleep Research May 26, 2004
- Aetiology and treatment of nightmare disorder: State of the art and future perspectives Journal of Sleep Research January 29, 2019
- Assessing sleep consciousness within subjects using a serial awakening paradigm Frontiers in Psychology 2013
- Questionnaires and diaries as research instruments in dream research: Methodological issues. Dreaming March 1, 2002
- A systematic review of variables associated with sleep paralysis Sleep Medicine Reviews June 8, 2017
and 22 more in the library