Experimental data, based upon a total of 212 hypnagogic awakenings contributed by 9 Ss, are presented on the incidence of reports of various forms of hypnagogic mentation and on the relationship of such reports to EEG activity. It was found that mental activity in some form or another was invariably reported throughout the hypnagogic period. Content reported was predominantly visual and lacking in affective intensity and it became increasingly hallucinatory and unamenable to voluntary control as EEG patterns shifted from an alpha EEG to a spindling EEG. Dreamlike reports very similar to REM reports (i.e., dramatic, hallucinatory episodes) were quite common during descending EEG Stages 1 and 2, and, surprisingly enough, also occurred with an alpha rhythm.

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Method 985 Results 990 Discussion 996 References 1004Summary.-Twenty-four Ss were exposed to controlled presleep stimuli. On one experimental night, they saw a violent episode, on the other, a nonviolent episode, from a TV western series. Dreams were collected using Dement and Kleitman's electrophysiological methods, by means of which rapid eye movement (REM) periods were used to identify "dream" periods. REM reports following the violent episode were longer, and more imaginative, vivid, and emotional, but neither more unpleasant nor more violent, than those following the nonviolent film. Direct incorporation of the content of either film was very ~nfrequent.It was also shown that MMPI clinical scales correlated positively wlth rarlngs of many "dream-like" features of sleep mencation, and that, although there were stylistic similarities between waking and sleeping fantasy, there was little similarity in instinctual content. Finally, recent findings on the extent and nature of sleep mentation occurring outside REM periods were almost totally confirmed.In the most infl~iencial and comprehensive of theories of dreaming it is held chat: "Something which has its origin in our conscious life and shares its characteristics-we call it the 'residue' from the previous day-meecs together with something from the realm of the unconscious in the formation of a dream, and it is becween these two regions that the dream-work is accomplished" (Freud, 1953, p. 222). A t least formally, then, the day residue, or, more generally, presleep experience, is accorded a role in dream construction which equals that of unconscious ideation and affect. And yet, apart from innumerable clinical anecdotes,

We attached electrodes to twenty young adults for electroencephalogram (EEC) and electrooculogram (EOG) recording. Each subject then lay down in a moderately illuminated room, isolated from experimenters, under instructions to "relax, but stay awake." At six randomly selected times, an experimenter gave a signal. The subject then reported his very last presignal mental experience and answered a series of questions about it. On most trials, subjects reported endogenous sensory imagery. Of all reports, 19% were described by subjects as hallucinatory, and 25% were reliably judged as regressive, using criteria comparable to those employed in studies of sleep mentation. Hallucination and regression were relatively independent report characteristics, rarely occurring together. By both subjective and EEG-EOG criteria, subjects were awake when experiencing this hallucinatory and/or regressive mentation. The results are used to argue that: (a) sleep-mentation retrieval and analysis techniques can be applied fruitfully to waking-thought samples; (b) relaxed waking thought is fairly susceptible to momentary intrusions of bizarre content or hallucination; (c) such qualities emerge in a variety of psychophysiological conditions and without any extraordinary induction techniques; and (d) the paradigm opens interesting new possibilities for studying similarities and differences between waking and sleeping thought.

Eighty children, 10 boys and 10 girls at each of four ages (5, 6, 7, and 8), were awakened from REM sleep on 10 occasions over the course of three nights in a sleep laboratory to report dreams. They also completed a variety of cognitive skill tests. In confirmation of an earlier, longitudinal study (Foulkes, 1982): Dreams were reported relatively seldom (median report rate of 20%); until age 7, their imagery was reported as more static than dynamic; until age 8, a passive-observer role for their self character was most common; until age 8, dream activity evidenced very simple forms of narrative structure; waking visuospatial, but not verbal, skills predicted dream-report rates, with Wechsler Block Design the single best such predictor. These replications argue: That reliable dream-laboratory data can be collected from young children; that dream production/experience depends upon representational intelligence; and that children's REM dream reports can be used to study the development of specifically conscious mental processes and representations.

Reports of sleep-onset and nocturnal (EEG Stage 1, rapid eye-movement [REM] period) mentation, CPIs, and thematic fantasy responses were collected from 32 young-adult Ss. In confirmation of recent findings by Foulkes and Vogel, dreamlike mental activity was found to occur with fairly substantial frequency at sleep onset, albeit with wide individual differences. Patterning of personality correlates with hypnagogic and nocturnal dream recall suggests that the former varies directly with waking ego-strength and adaptive flexibility, while the latter varies directly with indications of waking maladaptive symptomatology. A psychodynamic interpretation of these results is offered.

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