A Paradigm for Matching Waking Events Into Dream Reports

Abstract

In this study, participants recorded their waking events (Personal significant events, PSEs/Major concerns, MCs) and dream reports for 7 days. These events and dreams were paired by the same day (216 PSEs-dreams pairs and 215 MCs-dreams pairs). Then participants were instructed to both find similar features (characters, objects, locations, actions, emotions, and themes) of their events-dreams pairs and give a match score of their events-dreams pairs. Besides, we proposed a method for independent judges to match waking events into dreams (the external ratings). The rating standard of the external-ratings was to look for similar behaviors between events and dreams. Based on this rating standard, three independent judges were instructed to rate participants' events-dreams pairs. Firstly, we compared the two kinds of methods of self-ratings. Spearman correlations showed that the two methods were significantly correlated with each other. These results suggested that the sum of different kinds of similar features could be used to represent self-ratings reported of the degree of the correlation between a waking event and a dream. Regression correlations showed that for PSEs-dreams pairs, characters, actions, emotions, and themes were similar features that affected the degree of the correlation between an event and a dream of the same day, and for MCs-dreams pairs, characters, locations, emotions, and themes were similar features that affected the degree of the correlation between an event and a dream of the same day. These results suggested that different kinds of similar features had different influence on the self-ratings' evaluation for the degree of matching between waking event and dream. Secondly, we compared the rating results of the self-ratings and the rating results of the external-ratings. Spearman correlations showed that the results of the self-ratings were significantly correlated with the results of the externalratings. So this study's method for the external ratings may be suitable for future studies. Besides, as the external ratings of this study can rate dream metaphors, we also made a short discussion on dream metaphors. Future studies can use the method to explore dream metaphors.

Presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of them

“…Moreover, in this study, the self-rating method was to instruct participants to give a single score to represent the correlation between a positive spontaneous thought and a dream. Future study could use other kinds of method for the self-rating, such as the way of the external-rating method adopted here, which instructed participants to identify similar elements between a positive spontaneous thought and a dream (e.g., see Wang et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Dreaming is the subjective experience during sleep. As it is argued that waking-life experiences can be incorporated into dreams ( Freud, 1900 ), many research explored potential factors that can influence the possibility of the incorporation of waking-life experiences being incorporated into dreams (e.g., Schredl and Hofmann, 2003 ; Nielsen et al, 2004 ; Wamsley and Stickgold, 2009 ; Malinowski and Horton, 2014 ; van Rijn et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2020 ). To our knowledge, most of this kind of evidence was correlational in nature, because there was a difficulty to manipulate dream content directly (for a talk, see Schredl, 2003 ).…”

Evidence for preferentially dreaming of waking-life experiences that are relevant to one’s life story.

“…In this study, the latter rating was used to help participants rate the correlation between a waking-life experience and a dream report. We did not use the results of the latter rating in the data analysis process because this kind of rating may have some methodological problems (for an introduction, see Wang et al, 2020).…”

A presleep consideration of an intrusive thought enhances the possibility of dreaming of it.

“…In this study, participants were simply instructed to give a score to represent the correlation between their intrusive thoughts and their dreams. This kind of rating may be mainly affected by similar themes and emotions between waking and dreaming (Wang et al, 2020). As most dreams only contained fragmented elements of waking-life experiences (Fosse et al, 2003; Malinowski & Horton, 2014), participants may not know whether it was a correlation when dreams only contained limited similar elements with intrusive thoughts, such as similar characters.…”

“…Previous studies instructed participants to rate similar elements between waking-life experiences and dream reports, such as characters, objects, locations, actions, emotions, and themes (e.g., for an introduction, see Wang et al, 2020). External judges may underestimate emotions (Schredl & Doll, 1998), and the theme of a waking-life experience may be determined by other kinds of elements of the experience.…”