Dement & Kleitman

Core Study 8: Sleep and Dreams

Psychology being investigated

Sleep, Dreams, REM sleep:

● In REM sleep stage our eyes move under our lids and our brains are active
● Previous studies have shown that participants woken up from REM sleep are more likely to report a vivid dream, than participants woken up from nREM sleep
● nREM sleep can be divided into 4 stages, with 1 being the lightest and 4 the deepest sleep
Aims Overall: to investigate dreaming in an objective way by looking for relationships
between eye movements in sleep and dream recall

1 2. 3.
. To investigate whether there is
a positive correlation between To test whether eye
To test whether dream recall movement patterns are
differs between REM and subjective dream estimates of
dream duration and REM related to dream content
nREM sleep
period

3 specific approaches were used to test the 3 aims above


Aim 1:
To test whether dream recall differs between
REM and nREM sleep
To test whether dream recall differs
between REM and nREM sleep
Study 1:
Participants were woken up from either REM or nREM sleep
but were not told in which stage of sleeping they had been in.
They confirmed whether they had been sleeping and, if so,
described the content into a recorder.
IV: REM or nREM
DV: Whether or not a dream was reported
Natural experiment in a laboratory setting

Aim 2:
To investigate whether there is a
positive correlation between
subjective dream estimates of dream
duration and REM period
AiStudy 2:m Su
Participants were woken following either 5 or 15
minutes in REM sleep. They were asked to choose
whether they thought they had been dreaming for 5 or
15 minutes. They gave a report of dream content and
the number of words in the dream narrative was
counted.
IV: 5 or 15 min in REM sleep
DV: participants estimate of 5 or 15 min

Aim 3:
To test whether eye movement patterns
are related to dream content
Study 3:
The direction of eye movements
was detected using electrodes around the eyes (EOG).
Participants were woken
after exhibiting a single eye-movement pattern for longer than
one minute.
Again, they were asked to report their dream.
IV: Eye movement type
DV: Report of dream content
Natural experiment in a laboratory setting
Participants

● 9 adult participants
● 7 male & 2 female
● 5 studied in detail
● 4 were mainly used to confirm data collected
from the main 5
Procedure:

● During the daytime prior to arrival at the

laboratory, each participant ate normally ● The EEG ran continuously through the night
(excluding drinks containing alcohol or
caffeine). ● They were woken by a doorbell that was loud
enough to wake them from any sleep stage.
● Participants arrived at the laboratory just
before their normal bedtime and were fitted ● The doorbell was rung at various times during the
with electrodes attached near the eyes and night and participants indicated whether they had
on the scalp. been dreaming prior to being wokenand, if so,
described their dream into a voice recorder.
● Once participants were in bed in a quiet,
dark room, wires from the electrodes (were ● They returned to sleep
gathered into a ‘ponytail’ from each
participant’s head, to allow the person
freedom of movement)
Results (Study 1):

Participants recalled dreams better after

awakenings during REM sleep than after
nREM sleep.
Results (Study 2):

Researchers tried to wake participants up after

various REM duration and ask them to estimate,
but this was too hard

Participants correctly estimated their dream

duration more often when awoken after 5 minutes
(88%) than when awoken after 15 minutes (78%).

DN messed up the stats

 Results (Study 3):

Horizontal dream:

Two people throwing tomatoes at each other

Participants were woken after periods of specific eye-
movement patterns (vertical, horizontal, both or little
movement). A total of 35 awakenings were analysed
Vertical dream:
further.
Climbing up a series of ladders and looking up
and down while climbing
 Conclusions:

Dreams probably (although not Dreams are not Eye movements during REM
certainly) occur only during instantaneous events but rather sleep correspond to where, and at
REM sleep they are experienced in ‘real time’. what, the
dreamer is looking in the dream.

3 conclusions, one in relation to each study

 Evaluation:

Strengths: Weaknesses:

● Artificial setting -> lack of ecological validity

● High levels of standardisation
● Lack of mundane realism
● High levels of controls
● Lack of generalisability due to sample size
● Collects both quantitative and qualitative data
● Self-reports
 Issues and Debates:
Application to everyday life:
Could help sleep scientists to identify whether a person has a disorder based around REM sleep.

Individual vs Situational:

The individual side of the debate is supported by participants having different successes at estimating dream
duration. The situational side of the debate is supported by participants being in the laboratory

Nature vs Nurture:
The study could be considered to be relevant to the nature-nurture debate as it is believed that the experience of
REM and nREM sleep are universal and therefore due to nature.