Affect and cognition in dreams: a critique of the cognitive role in adaptive dream functioning and support for associative models.

Abstract

Dream affect and cognition are examined in a 4-month longitudinal study of depressed, recently divorced subjects. Several measures of cognition in dream reports were used to determine whether remitting subjects were more likely to utilize certain cognitive strategies than nonremitters. No differences were found in the cognition between those who were remitting and nonremitting subjects. Levels of cognition in dreaming were directly related to the emotional intensity of the dreams across all subjects. In subjects with higher depression scores (Beck Depression Inventory > 20), depression levels were inversely related to both dream affect and cognition. It is argued that cognition plays a secondary role in dream production. A modification of David Foulkes's model of dreaming is proposed, in which emotional intensity drives associative processes, which in turn require more elaborate cognitive devices to relate diverse activated mnemonic units.