Studying dream content using the archive and search engine on DreamBank.net.
G William Domhoff, Adam Schneider
Consciousness and Cognition August 3, 2008 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.06.010 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Humans Motor activity Sexual behavior Emotions Interpersonal relations Dreams Mental recall Thinking Wakefulness Kinesthesis Religion and psychology Spirituality Culture Archives Internet |
| Key points | Argues that the DreamBank.net dream archive and search engine can generate new findings on dream content, including social networks, religious and sexual elements, and individual characters, activities, and emotions. Proposes that reading dreams retrieved with a few keywords can support accurate inferences about a person's religious beliefs, with overall findings similar to those from traditional content analysis. |
Abstract
This paper shows how the dream archive and search engine on DreamBank.net, a Web site containing over 22,000 dream reports, can be used to generate new findings on dream content, some of which raise interesting questions about the relationship between dreaming and various forms of waking thought. It begins with studies that draw dream reports from DreamBank.net for studies of social networks in dreams, and then demonstrates the usefulness of the search engine by employing word strings relating to religious and sexual elements. Examples from two lengthy individual dream series are used to show how the dreams of one person can be studied for characters, activities, and emotions. A final example shows that accurate inferences about a person's religious beliefs can be made on the basis of reading through dreams retrieved with a few keywords. The overall findings are similar to those in studies using traditional forms of content analysis.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 34
- Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives Frontiers in Psychology 2011
- Structural differences between REM and non-REM dream reports assessed by graph analysis PLoS One July 23, 2020
- The Language of Dreams: Application of Linguistics-Based Approaches for the Automated Analysis of Dream Experiences Clocks & Sleep September 19, 2021
- Flying dreams stimulated by an immersive virtual reality task. Consciousness and Cognition August 1, 2020
- DREAM: A Dream EEG and Mentation database May 16, 2023
and 29 more in the library
Cites 3
- Incorporation of concern- and nonconcern-related verbal stimuli into dream content. Journal of Abnormal Psychology February 1, 1981
- Dreams as the Expression of Conceptions and Concerns: A Comparison of German and American College Students Imagination, Cognition and Personality March 1, 2006
- Properties of the organization of memory for people: evidence from dream reports. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review April 1, 2007