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, 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, 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 external-ratings. 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.
Highlights
Dreaming is a universal experience that occurs during sleep
The analyzed data set consisted of a total of 216 personally significant events (PSEs)-dreams pairs and 215 major concerns (MCs)-dreams pairs
In MCsdreams pairs, though themes (17.1%) and actions (21.4%) had similar frequencies, themes were similar features that affected the Matching-score, but not for actions. These results may suggest that different kinds of similar features had different influence on the self-ratings’ evaluation for the degree of matching between waking event and dream
Summary
Dreaming is a universal experience that occurs during sleep. There is evidence for a 7-day U-shaped timescale of incorporation of memories of experiences when awake into dreams, in which events from 1 or 2 days before the dream, and from 5 to 7 days before the dream, are preferentially incorporated into dream content (e.g., Nielsen and Powell, 1992; Nielsen et al, 2004; Continuity of Waking Events-DreamsBlagrove et al, 2011; van Rijn et al, 2015; Eichenlaub et al, 2019). In addition to the self-report method, some studies used the independentjudge method (e.g., Blagrove et al, 2011; van Rijn et al, 2015) In this situation, external judges who do not know participants’ information rated correlations between participants’ waking events and dream reports. Evidence showed that when compared with the independent-judge method, the self-report method has the advantage of studying the dream-lag effect (for a discussion, see the introduction section in Eichenlaub et al, 2019). In our opinion, when a study aims to explore whether some personality traits can affect conscious experiences’ incorporation into dreams, the independent-judge method is more suitable than the self-report method. The independent-judge method may be more suitable for this kind of research
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