State-dependent thinking: a comparison of waking and dreaming thought.
Consciousness and Cognition December 15, 2004 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2004.10.005 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 26 |
| Population | People who provided dream reports and answered questions about their thinking within dreams |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Humans Cognition Awareness Dreams Thinking Psychological theory Wakefulness Qualitative research Adolescent Adult Female |
| Key findings | The authors report that thinking in dreams is not monolithic but has two components: cognition within a dream scenario resembled waking-state cognition, while thinking about the dream scenario itself was deficient and very different from waking-state thinking. |
Abstract
Thinking is known to be state dependent but a systematic study of how thinking in dreams differs from thinking while awake has not been done. The study consisted of analyzing the dream reports of 26 subjects who, in addition to providing dream reports also provided answers to questions about their thinking within the dream. Our hypothesis was that thinking in dreams is not monolithic but has two distinct components, one that is similar to wake-state cognition, and another that is fundamentally different. We found that cognition within a dream scenario was similar to that of wake-state cognition, but that thinking about the scenario itself was deficient and very different than wake-state thinking.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Other as a Nightmare: The Israeli-Arab Encounter as Reflected in Children's Dreams in Israel and the West Bank Jewish and Arab fifth to seventh graders living in various settings in Israel and the... | 1989 | Qualitative content analysis | n = 212 |
| Nonwaking Responses to Waking Stressors: Dreams and Nightmares1 Men from the cohort eligible for military duty during the Vietnam Conflict, varying in... | 1990 | Survey interview study | n = 442 |
| Communing with the Gods: The Dreaming Brain in Cross-cultural Perspective | 2011 | Phenomenological study | |
| Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment. Lucid dreamers | 2020 | Qualitative study | |
| Strange themes in pandemic dreams: Insomnia was associated with more negative, anxious and death‐related dreams during the COVID‐19 pandemic Global survey participants | 2022 | Longitudinal mixed-methods study | n = 2,240 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 28
- New perspectives for the study of lucid dreaming: From brain stimulation to philosophical theories of self-consciousness heiDOK (Heidelberg University) 2010
- Lucid dreaming during NREM sleep: Two case reports heiDOK (Heidelberg University) 2012
- Comparing the phenomenological qualities of stimulus-independent thought, stimulus-dependent thought and dreams using experience sampling Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences December 13, 2020
- What is the State-of-the-Art on Lucid Dreaming? 2015
- Bizarreness of Lucid and Non-lucid Dream: Effects of Metacognition. Frontiers in Psychology 2019
and 23 more in the library