Last night I had the strangest dream: Varieties of rational thought processes in dream reports.
Richard N Wolman, Miloslava Kozmová
Consciousness and Cognition December 8, 2006 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2006.09.009 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Empirical phenomenological study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 10 |
| Population | Male participants aged 22-59 years and female participants aged 25-49 years who kept individual dream journals |
| Keywords | Humans Motor activity Affect Cognition Awareness Dreams Intuition Association Mental recall Perception Thinking Wakefulness Culture Adult Middle aged Female |
| Key points | The authors report that their scoring of dream thought units supports the hypothesis that dream construction involves rational thought processes. They argue that eight fundamental rational thought processes can be applied to the dreaming process, challenging views of dream thought as purely hallucinatory, bizarre, or illogical. |
Abstract
From the neurophysiological perspective, thinking in dreaming and the quality of dream thought have been considered hallucinatory, bizarre, illogical, improbable, or even impossible. This empirical phenomenological research concentrates on testing whether dream thought can be defined as rational in the sense of an intervening mental process between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, leading to a conclusion or to taking action. From 10 individual dream journals of male participants aged 22-59 years and female participants aged 25-49 years, we delimited four dreams per journal and randomly selected five thought units from each dream for scoring. The units provided a base for testing a hypothesis that the thought processes of dream construction are rational. The results support the hypothesis and demonstrate that eight fundamental rational thought processes can be applied to the dreaming process.
Citations in the library
Cited by 15
- Exploring the neural correlates of dream phenomenology and altered states of consciousness during sleep Neuroscience of Consciousness 2017
- Volitional components of consciousness vary across wakefulness, dreaming and lucid dreaming Frontiers in Psychology 2014
- Emotions during Non-Lucid Problem-Solving Dreams as Evidence of Secondary Consciousness, Comprehensive Psychology 2015
- Imagination and belief in dreams Episteme September 18, 2025
- Dreaming is a conscious experience in its own right: proponents of non-cognitive and non-executive theories of dreaming suffer from a retrospective illusion of their waking extended self. Consciousness and Cognition May 30, 2025
and 10 more in the library
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and 1 more in the library