Abstract
Sleep scientists have shown that dreaming helps people improve their waking lives, and they have done so by developing sophisticated content analysis scales. Dream analysis entails time-consuming manual annotation of text. That is why dream reports have been recently mined with algorithms, and these algorithms focused on identifying emotions. In so doing, researchers have not tackled two main technical challenges though: (i) how to mine aspects of dream reports that research has found important, such as characters and interactions; and (ii) how to do so in a principled way grounded in the literature. To tackle these challenges, we designed a tool that automatically scores dream reports by operationalizing the widely used dream analysis scale by Hall and Van de Castle. We validated the tool’s effectiveness on hand-annotated dream reports (the average error is 0.24), scored 24 000 reports—far more than any previous study—and tested what sleep scientists call the ‘continuity hypothesis’ at this unprecedented scale: we found supporting evidence that dreams are a continuation of what happens in everyday life. Our results suggest that it is possible to quantify important aspects of dreams, making it possible to build technologies that bridge the current gap between real life and dreaming.
Highlights
Research has repeatedly provided strong support for what sleep scientists refer to as the ‘continuity hypothesis of dreams’: most dreams are a continuation of what is happening in everyday life
We evaluated our tool using two sets of dream reports that have been hand-coded by dream experts using the Hall–Van de Castle system (§4.2.1): (i) the annotated set of dream reports, and (ii) the normative set from which the norms used in the literature were computed
Unlike aggression acts which tend to take a variety of forms, sexual interactions take predictable forms, typically involve two individuals having sex, and, as such, are easier to automatically identify; friendly interactions, on the other hand, are identified with a level of difficulty that is between aggression acts’ and friendly interactions’
Summary
Research has repeatedly provided strong support for what sleep scientists refer to as the ‘continuity hypothesis of dreams’: most dreams are a continuation of what is happening in everyday life. The main goal of dream analysis is to help people address their real-life problems. This hypothesis provides a theoretical basis for therapy as it can royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R. The notion that dreams contain hidden meanings has been popular for centuries. During the second century AD, Artemidorus Daldianus produced a five-volume work entitled Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of Dreams) [22,23], which catalogued the meaning of a large number of symbols and situations. Artemidorus’ volumes were the most popular work on dream interpretation until modern times. Another interpretation system—a recent one—enjoyed a similar success. Despite recognizing the importance of a large number of symbols and situations, Freud mainly focused on two basic hidden human needs: sex and aggression
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
