Dream emotions: a comparison of home dream reports with laboratory early and late REM dream reports.
Pilleriin Sikka, Antti Revonsuo, Nils Sandman, Jarno Tuominen, Katja Valli
Journal of Sleep Research April 1, 2018 DOI: 10.1111/jsr.12555 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 18 |
| Population | Adults (11 women, seven men; mean age 25.89 ± 4.85) |
| Duration | 7-day home dream collection period plus two non-consecutive nights in the sleep laboratory |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Content analysis Sleep stages |
| Key findings | Home dream reports were more emotional than laboratory early REM dream reports, but not more emotional than laboratory late REM dream reports; home dreams also had higher emotion density and were more negative than lab dreams. |
Abstract
The aim of this study was to compare the emotional content of dream reports collected at home upon morning awakenings with those collected in the laboratory upon early and late rapid eye movement (REM) sleep awakenings. Eighteen adults (11 women, seven men; mean age = 25.89 ± 4.85) wrote down their home dreams every morning immediately upon awakening during a 7-day period. Participants also spent two non-consecutive nights in the sleep laboratory where they were awoken 5 min into each continuous REM sleep stage, upon which they gave a verbal dream report. The content of a total of 151 home and 120 laboratory dream reports was analysed by two blind judges using the modified Differential Emotions Scale. It was found that: (1) home dream reports were more emotional than laboratory early REM dream reports, but not more emotional than laboratory late REM dream reports; (2) home dream reports contained a higher density of emotions than laboratory (early or late REM) dream reports; and (3) home dream reports were more negative than laboratory dream reports, but differences between home and early REM reports were larger than those between home and late REM reports. The results suggest that differences between home and laboratory dream reports in overall emotionality may be due to the time of night effect. Whether differences in the density of emotions and negative emotionality are due to sleep environment or due to different reporting procedures and time spent in a sleep stage, respectively, remains to be determined in future studies.
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 18
- The Language of Dreams: Application of Linguistics-Based Approaches for the Automated Analysis of Dream Experiences Clocks & Sleep September 19, 2021
- Dreaming of the sleep lab PLoS One October 6, 2021
- DREAM: A Dream EEG and Mentation database May 16, 2023
- The dynamics of emotional behaviors in rapid eye movement sleep Sleep November 29, 2022
- Negative dream affect is associated with next-day affect level, but not with affect reactivity or affect regulation Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience October 19, 2022
and 13 more in the library
Cites 12
- How You Measure Is What You Get: Differences in Self- and External Ratings of Emotional Experiences in Home Dreams The American Journal of Psychology August 21, 2017
- A Comparison of Mental Activity During Sleep Onset and Morning Awakening Sleep August 1, 1998
- Laboratory references in dreams: Methodological problem and/or evidence for the continuity hypothesis of dreaming? heiDOK (Heidelberg University) 2008
- Methodological issues affecting the collection of dreams Journal of Sleep Research March 1, 1993
- Time-of-night variations in the story-like organization of dream experience developed during rapid eye movement sleep. Journal of Sleep Research April 1, 2015
and 7 more in the library