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Do People Still Report Dreaming in Black and White? An Attempt to Replicate a Questionnaire from 1942
Perceptual and Motor Skills
Abstract
In the 1940s and 1950s many people in the United States appear to have thought they dreamed in black and white. For example, Middleton (1942) found that 70.7% of 277 college sophomores reported "rarely" or "never" seeing colors in their dreams. The present study replicated Middleton's questionnaire and found that a sample of 124 students in 2001 reported a significantly greater rate of colored dreaming than the earlier sample, with only 17.7% saying that they "rarely" or "never" see colors in their dreams. Assuming that dreams themselves have not changed over this time period, it appears that one or the other (or both) groups of respondents must be profoundly mistaken about a basic feature of their dream experiences.
... we conclude by examining one further argument for caution. Eric Schwitzgebel (2002Schwitzgebel ( , 2003Schwitzgebel ( , 2006 has examined the case of dreaming as part of a general argument "that we are pervasively and grossly mistaken about our own conscious experience" (2002: 658). Combining historical, psychological, and philosophical analysis, Schwitzgebel examines references to colour in dreams over a long historical period. ...
... we conclude by examining one further argument for caution. Eric Schwitzgebel (2002Schwitzgebel ( , 2003Schwitzgebel ( , 2006 has examined the case of dreaming as part of a general argument "that we are pervasively and grossly mistaken about our own conscious experience" (2002: 658). Combining historical, psychological, and philosophical analysis, Schwitzgebel examines references to colour in dreams over a long historical period. ...
... we conclude by examining one further argument for caution. Eric Schwitzgebel (2002Schwitzgebel ( , 2003Schwitzgebel ( , 2006 has examined the case of dreaming as part of a general argument "that we are pervasively and grossly mistaken about our own conscious experience" (2002: 658). Combining historical, psychological, and philosophical analysis, Schwitzgebel examines references to colour in dreams over a long historical period. ...
... Some dream researchers then were convinced that people only dream in greyscales because of the analogy to black and white mass media such as television and cinema (Schwitzgebel, 2002). Schwitzgebel (2003) repeated the Middleton (1942) study 61 years later and found a prevalence of only 4.4% of the participants who reported dreams without colors, a finding which he explained by the growing popularity of colored mass media. A survey by Murzyn (2008) corroborated these findings: The age group confronted with black and white media for a longer period of time estimated that they dream more in greyscale than the younger age group, who were reported that they were less exposed to black and white media. ...
... So there is a question as to why some persons report that their dreams are mainly black and white. The explanation offered by Schwitzgebel (2003) was based on his view that dreams are neither colored nor black and white; this seems not very plausible according to the above mentioned findings. An alternative viewpoint would be that it is difficult to remember the color of dream objects (if not being asked directly after awakening) as the actions and emotions are more prominent in dreams (Schredl, 2014). ...
Visual elements are important ingredients of dreams, so dream objects should be - based on the continuity hypothesis of dreaming - as colorful as the waking world. However, the percentages of recalled colored versus black and white dreams as estimated by the participants varied considerably across studies. In the present online study, 2701 persons completed a question about recalling colors in their dreams with three options: percentage of black and white dreams, percentage of colored dreams, and percentage of dreams with no memory of colors. The older participants who most likely had watched black and white TV reported higher recall of black and white dreams than younger persons while the younger group with access to colored TV estimated that their dreams include more often colors compared to the older group. Since the attitude towards dreams and dream recall frequency were positively associated with the reporting of colored dreams, one might hypothesize that dreamers may attribute colors to a dream even if they are do not remember the colors of their actual dreams. In order to validate the present findings, future studies should include the amount of media consumption (TV, cinema etc.) over the life span of the individual and elicit possible confounding factors like age-related memory changes, attention to colors in waking life, and emotional valence of colored dream elements.
... Researchers in the 1950's had commonly reported that dreams were predominantly experienced in black and white, in contrast to earlier writers, and a marked change of opinion in the 1960's onward that suggested we dream predominantly in colour [21]. This may be a consequence of methodological differences between studies [22,23]. Schwitzgebel, however, has put forth the intriguing hypothesis that the frequent reports of black and white dreams in the 1950's may have been the result of the prominence of black and white film media in the first half of the twentieth century [21]. ...
... Schwitzgebel, however, has put forth the intriguing hypothesis that the frequent reports of black and white dreams in the 1950's may have been the result of the prominence of black and white film media in the first half of the twentieth century [21]. Schwitzgebel repeated the methodology of a 1942 study on colour in dreams and found a significantly greater proportion of students in 2001 reported dreaming in colour in comparison with their 1942 counterparts [23]. Furthermore he found that cultural groups with longer histories of exposure to colour media also report more dreaming in colour [24]. ...
Advances in media and communication technology have opened up new avenues for understanding consciousness through observation of behaviour in virtual environments. A convergence of progress in cognitive neuroscience and computer science should consider the powerful role of conscious and unconscious states as an interface between self and virtual worlds. In this chapter, we review the premise of presence as a dimension of consciousness from both a phenomenological and neuroscientific perspective. Working from a model in which dreaming consciousness is considered the most archetypal form of media technology, dreams are discussed as a useful metaphor for virtual reality. We argue that presence can be equally compelling whether experienced via self-generated simulation during the process of dreaming, or through an externally generated media simulation. Attempts to use media technology in a therapeutic context need to consider clinical aspects of mechanisms involved in both normal and clinical/pathological aspects of consciousness. A speculative therapeutic approach, "dream simulation therapy", is discussed as a future possible area of study. Dreaming consciousness reminds us that the key factor in approaching an ultimate technology-mediated presence experience is the sum rather than its parts: a subjective/affective state of being.
... Based on a review of historical studies on color in dreams, he found evidence for "an arc of opinion: before scientific psychology, a consensus or assumption that dreams are colored; divided opinions into the early twentieth century; a consensus that dreams typically have little color from about 1930 to 1960; and then a sudden overturning of that consensus in the 1960s" (Schwitzgebel, 2011, p. 5; cf. Schwitzgebel, 2002). ...
... Schwitzgebel's skepticism derives its force from the fact that it is neither based on conceptual considerations nor on a hypothetical thought experiment, but on actual empirical findings. His position is also special in that it has prompted a number of follow-up studies, including his own (Schwitzgebel, 2003;Schwitzgebel et al., 2006). At the same time, it is not clear that his argument targets the transparency assumption as defined here at all. ...
Are dreams subjective experiences during sleep? Is it like something to dream, or is it only like something to remember dreams after awakening? Specifically, can dream reports be trusted to reveal what it is like to dream, and should they count as evidence for saying that dreams are conscious experiences at all? The goal of this article is to investigate the relationship between dreaming, dream reporting and subjective experience during sleep. I discuss different variants of philosophical skepticism about dream reporting and argue that they all fail. Consequently, skeptical doubts about the trustworthiness of dream reports are misguided, and for systematic reasons. I suggest an alternative, anti-skeptical account of the trustworthiness of dream reports. On this view, dream reports, when gathered under ideal reporting conditions and according to the principle of temporal proximity, are trustworthy (or transparent) with respect to conscious experience during sleep. The transparency assumption has the status of a methodologically necessary default assumption and is theoretically justified because it provides the best explanation of dream reporting. At the same time, it inherits important insights from the discussed variants of skepticism about dream reporting, suggesting that the careful consideration of these skeptical arguments ultimately leads to a positive account of why and under which conditions dream reports can and should be trusted. In this way, moderate distrust can be fruitfully combined with anti-skepticism about dream reporting. Several perspectives for future dream research and for the comparative study of dreaming and waking experience are suggested.
... According to this hypothesis, objects that are normally colored (e.g., skin, sky, water) should not appear as black and white within dreams. The marked percentage of persons who report that they do not remember whether their dreams are colored or not (Schwitzgebel, 2003) suggests that memory might play a role. If the color is not outstanding or important for the dream action, it might be difficult to remember the colors; for example, the clothes' colors of a person one talked to in the dream. ...
... First, the application of a new questionnaire item that included explicit instructions about color perception in dreams showed that the colors of dreams or dream elements were often not remembered. None of the participants stated that all of his or her dreams are in black and white, thus confirming the results of Schwitzgebel (2003). Asking retrospectively about colors in dreams, only about 10% of the dreams and dream elements were rated as black and white. ...
The present study was designed to investigate whether memory processes play a role in why some persons say their dreams are black and white. The findings indicate that the percentages of black and white dreams are related negatively to color memory and dream recall frequency. When colors were recorded immediately after the dream was recorded, the percentage of black and white dream elements dropped to 2.7%. When participants were presented the option that dream colors might not be remembered, the percentage of explicit black and white dreams became very small, and the findings are thus in line with the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. Future studies might use extensive training of color memory and dream recall in order to investigate whether highly trained persons still have some dreams or dream elements that are in black and white. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... Alternatively, bodily movement sensations may be ambiguous or underrepresented (Windt 2017). A similar view is applied to the perception of colour in dreams (Schwitzgebel 2002(Schwitzgebel , 2003Schwitzgebel et al. 2006). This anosognosia analogy goes against dreamers' insistence that, at times, they really did feel embodied and embedded, especially whilst lucid. ...
Although the sense of agency is often reduced if not absent in dreams, our agentive dream experiences can at times be similar to or enhanced compared to waking. The sense of agency displayed in dreams is perplexing as we are mostly shut off from real stimulus whilst asleep. Theories of waking sense of agency, in particular, comparator and holistic models, are analysed in order to argue that despite the isolation from the real environment, these models can help account for dream experience. The dreamer might feel an increased sense of control of their dream bodies and a sense that they can directly control elements of the dream world. Such experiences may at times be caused by superstitious or delusional thinking due to altered cognition and changes to the sleeping brain. Here it is argued that some such experiences are akin to specific waking delusions, such as delusions of grandeur, with similar cognitive features. However, other instances of increased sense of agency in dreaming appear to be sui generis and nothing like what we experience when awake. Lucid control dreams, in which the dreamer realises that they are dreaming and that they can control the dream environment, are examples of such an experience although further nuance is required to account for their specific cognitive attributes. Future empirical research should focus on controlled dream reporting conditions in order to clarify the types of experience that occur and determine the relevant cognitive mechanisms that relate to each type.
... 14 See Smithies (2013a, b) for overviews on the debate concerning cognitive phenomenology. 15 See also Schwitzgebel (2002Schwitzgebel ( , 2003, Schwitzgebel et al. (2006). 16 See Schwitzgebel (2011: ch. 2) for an in-depth discussion of the issue with more historical references. ...
Sceptics vis-à-vis introspection often base their scepticism on ‘phenomenological disputes’, ‘introspective disagreement’, or ‘introspective disputes’ (ID) (see Kriegel in Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6(1):115–136, 2007; Bayne and Spener in Philos Issues 20(1):1–22, 2010; Schwitzgebel in Perplexities of consciousness, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2011): introspectors massively diverge in their opinions about experiences, and there seems to be no method to resolve these issues. Sceptics take this to show that introspection lacks any epistemic merit. Here, I provide a list of paradigmatic examples, distill necessary and sufficient conditions for IDs, present the sceptical argument encouraged by IDs, and review the two main strategies (resolution and containment) to reject such a scepticism. However, both types of strategies are unsatisfactory. In order to save introspection from the looming sceptical threat, I advocate a deflationary strategy, based on either an ‘Argument from Perceptual Kinship’ or an ‘Argument from Ownership’. In the end, there cannot be any genuine IDs, for nothing can fulfil the reasonable conditions for IDs. What looks like IDs may instead be indicators of phenomenal variation. Debates that look like IDs may then arise even if introspection were a perfect method to know one’s mind. Thus, scepticism vis-à-vis introspection based on IDs rests on shaky grounds.
... 8 Are dreams coloured or in black and white? Schwitzgebel [31,32,35] traced the wide divergence in opinions over time and area. ...
So called “shapes of opposition”—like the classical square of opposition and its extensions—can be seen as graphical representations of the ways in which types of statements constrain each other in their possible truth values. As such, they can be used as a novel way of analysing the subject matter of disputes. While there have been great refinements and extensions of this logico-topological tool in the last years, the broad range of shapes of opposition are not widely known outside of a circle of specialists. This ignorance may lead to the presumption that the classical square of opposition fits all disputes. A broader view, which takes expanded shapes of opposition into account, may come to a more nuanced appraisal of possible disputes. Once we take other shapes of opposition into account, some alleged disputes may turn out to be Scheindisputes. In order to do the wide range of linguistic expressions justice and to differentiate Scheindisputes from real ones, a broader view is advised. To illustrate this point, I discuss the notion of “introspective disputes”. These are commonly reconstructed as obeying the square, but are more aptly reconstructed with a more complex octagon. If we reconstruct these disputes based on Buridan’s octagon, it becomes obvious that “introspective disputes” are likely Scheindisputes.
... Taken altogether, the problem as to whether all dreams are colored is not yet solved and thus the question arises as to what factors affect the reporting of colors in dreams. Schwitzgebel (7) pointed out that the media (cinema, TV in black and white) might have contributed to the low number of colored dreams in the middle of the last century. In Chinese students, Schwitzgebel, Huang and Zhou (10) found that frequency of colored dreams is related to the age when the person had first access to colored media but not with the amount of time currently watching colored or black-and-white media. ...
The continuity hypothesis of dreaming states that dream content reflects waking-life. Given that our daily world is colored, one would expect that all dreams contain some kind of color. The percentage of colored dreams, however, varies greatly between studies. Influencing factors might be the understanding of dreams (comparing them with films which have been mostly black and white in the first half of the twentieth century) and creativity. The present study included 444 participants who kept a dream diary over two weeks and completed several questionnaires, The findings indicated that report style has a small but significant relationship with spontaneously reported colors in dreams. Future studies should focus on the question as to whether dream objects are colored in the same way as in waking-life.
... In a series of three related articles, Schwitzgebel (2002Schwitzgebel ( , 2003Schwitzgebel, Huang, & Zhou, 2006) addressed the question of whether we dream in black and white. In raising this issue, he was primarily analyzing and questioning the reliability of reports of dreaming in black and white. ...
New directions in film and media theory have begun to focus on precognitive, embodied aspects of film viewing. Drawing on these recent theoretical approaches, this article examines correspondences between the brain–mind state of the dreamer and the film viewer and formal similarities between the cinematic image and dream images. First, the study asks whether cinema's evolution toward the production of images that are more easily processed by the brain has also made film images easily accessible during dream-sleep. Then it shows how the cinematic image and the visual imaging of dreams depend on a similar construction of navigable space. The analysis suggests that the bodily systems for simulating movement and establishing spatial orientation function in a similar manner during dreaming and film viewing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... The results showed that at age 20 or younger, the proportion of individuals who always, sometimes, or occasionally had color appearing in their dreams was approximately 80%, whereas among those 60 or older, the proportion was less than 20%. The proportion of younger participants corresponded to the results of Schwitzgebel (2003), and that of older persons was close to the report of Murzyn (2008). Then, once more, Okada, Matsuoka, and Hatakeyama, (2005) confirmed that approximately 80% of undergraduate students dreamt in color. ...
We examined evidence for developmental and generational differences in dreaming in color from childhood to old age. To separate these effects, we surveyed the frequency of color experience in dreams twice, with a 16-year interval between surveys. In the 1993 survey, 2,077 (male: 1,194; female: 883; ages: 10 to 85 years) and, in 2009, 1,328 (male: 596; female: 732; ages: 11 to 89 years) participants completed a dream recall questionnaire that included a question about the presence of color in their dreams. In both surveys, approximately 80% of subjects younger than 30 years of age experienced color in their dreams, but the percentage decreased with age and fell to approximately 20% by the age of 60. The frequency of dreaming in color increased from 1993 to 2009 only for respondents in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. We speculate that color TV may play a role in the generational difference observed. However, it is true that generation affects the incidence of color in dreams, as suggested by Schwitzgebel, Huang, and Zhou (2006) and Murzyn (2008), although this effect is very small compared with that of aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... By this reasoning, for example, fewer experiences with airplane flight by older individuals might be reflected in a lower likelihood of having flying dreams, or less witnessing of violence might lead to a lower likelihood of having attack dreams, and so forth. While this possibility could not be addressed directly with the present measures, evidence for such an effect was found to partially explain a progressive age-related decrease in color dreams (Schwitzgebel, 2003;Murzyn, 2008), specifically, older subjects had both fewer color dreams and more past exposure to black and white televisions (Okada et al., 2011). Notwithstanding this finding, the latter authors also found that the effect size of the generational influence on color dreams was only one twentieth of the effect size observed for aging per se. ...
We assessed dream recall frequency (DRF) and dream theme diversity (DTD) with an internet questionnaire among a cohort of 28,888 male and female participants aged 10–79 years in a cross-sectional design. DRF increased from adolescence (ages 10–19) to early adulthood (20–29) and then decreased again for the next 20 years. The nature of this decrease differed for males and females. For males, it began earlier (30–39), proceeded more gradually, and reached a nadir earlier (40–49) than it did for females. For females, it began later (40–49), dropped more abruptly, and reached nadir later (50–59). Marked sex differences were observed for age strata 10–19 through 40–49 and year-by-year analyses estimated the window for these differences to be more precisely from 14 to 44 years. DTD decreased linearly with age for both sexes up to 50–59 and then dropped even more sharply for 60–79. There was a sex difference favoring males on this measure but only for ages 10–19. Findings replicate, in a single sample, those from several previous studies showing an increase in DRF from adolescence to early adulthood, a subsequent decrease primarily in early and middle adulthood, and different patterns of age-related decrease in the two sexes. Age-related changes in sleep structure, such as decreasing %REM sleep which parallel the observed dream recall changes, might help explain these findings, but these sleep changes are much smaller and more gradual in nature. Changes in the phase and amplitude of circadian rhythms of REM propensity and generational differences in life experiences may also account for some part of the findings. That decreases in DTD parallel known age-related decreases in episodic and autobiographical memory may signify that this new diversity measure indexes an aspect of autobiographical memory that also influences dream recall.
... In the recent discussion on dreaming, both in philosophy and neuroscience, several authors have suggested that dreaming should be conceptualized as imagination during sleep. On this view, dreaming differs from waking perception on the phenomenal level of description, for instance in terms of the color saturation and detail of visual imagery (Schwitzgebel, 2002(Schwitzgebel, , 2003Schwitzgebel, Huang, & Yifeng, 2006), but also by giving rise to the type of fictional absorption experienced when watching a movie or reading a novel (Ichikawa, 2009;McGinn, 2004McGinn, , 2007. All of these involve varying degrees of detachment from the actual environment and cognitive absorption in the mentally simulated environment. ...
In this paper, we address the different ways in which dream research can contribute to interdisciplinary consciousness research. As a second global state of consciousness aside from wakefulness, dreaming is an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness. However, programmatic suggestions for integrating dreaming into broader theories of consciousness, for instance by regarding dreams as a model system of standard or pathological wake states, have not yielded straightforward results. We review existing proposals for using dreaming as a model system, taking into account concerns about the concept of modeling and the adequacy and practical feasibility of dreaming as a model system. We conclude that existing modeling approaches are premature and rely on controversial background assumptions. Instead, we suggest that contrastive analysis of dreaming and wakefulness presents a more promising strategy for integrating dreaming into a broader research context and solving many of the problems involved in the modeling approach.
... There is still an ongoing discussion whether people dream in color or in black-and-white, at least sometimes (Schredl, Fuchedzhieva, Hämig, & Schindele, 2008;Schwitzgebel, 2003). Robert Hoss analyzed large samples of dream reports with respect to how often different colors were explicitly mentioned by the dreamer. ...
The International Journal of Dream Research is reaching its third year. The two issues of 2009 included 13 original papers and one invited essay. These articles covered a large variety of topics like lucid dreaming, dream recall, dream content, nightmares, dreams and psychopathology, and sleep quality. Submissions from all over the world including Canada, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany clearly indicate that our journal is truly international...
We begin our response by restating and clarifying the principal argument
of the target article. We go on to focus on four main themes addressed by the commentators: (a) the question of the inevitability of a horizon in enacting beliefs about experience; (b) the consequences of our epistemological position for second-person research methodologies; (c) the importance of distinguishing between the feeling of veracity of what is observed and the unquestioned realist intuitions of the natural attitude; and finally (d) the implications of our discussion for first-person science. We conclude by addressing the question about the relationship between inferred and apprehended experience.
We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences (“hearing voices”) and auditory verbal agency (inner speech, and specifically “talking to (imaginary) voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences (VE) and auditory verbal agencies (VA), displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, non-REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was controlled with the nightcap sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep-onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic-pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived.
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) opens with a series of long takes of a car winding steadily down a road in the Iranian countryside. In other words, it opens with a sequence which, to anybody who knows Kiarostami's work, will be immediately recognizable as typical of it: Life and Nothing More (1992) returns repeatedly to such sequences, and ends with one; such sequences turn up in Through the Olive Trees (1994) and Taste of Cherry (1997); the protagonist of Where is the Friend's Home? (1987) is too young to drive, but we see him from a distance meandering in a similar pattern on more than one occasion (and sequences of the same type return in Certified Copy (2010)). As with the other sequences, the opening of The Wind Will Carry Us is beautiful, intriguing and, with its muted semi-screwball feel, kind of funny. By the time of the film's release, however, the car on screen was bringing this cinematic history with it. Thus there is something self-aware or even self-effacing about these opening images: Kiarostami is referring here, both seriously and playfully, not only to his previous works but also perhaps to himself, and to the by-then internationally recognizable figure called "Kiarostami." So if Jean-Luc Nancy is right to say that such long aerial takes are Kiarostami's "signature" (Evidence of Film, 10)—that "a person or a car's zigzagging path on the background of an unchanging landscape traverses, like a single trajectory, five movies [...] and turns into an emblematic summary of all the films" (24)—then this is complicated here by a certain irony. Indeed it would be possible to read the reflexivity of these images as playfully mocking Kiarostami's own signature, and thus perhaps as problematizing the very notion: Kiarostami doesn't let us forget that we are watching one of his films, and pokes fun at us, and at himself, in reminding that fact. This is to say that in the opening sequence of the film Kiarostami cites his own signature, with all the epistemological and metaphysical complications that such a gesture entails. Yet this self-effacing gesture is not simply ironic, and it is not in spite but also partly because of its extreme reflexivity that the opening sequence of this film in particular is so beautiful, intriguing, and gently funny. After all, gestures of self effacement—ironic nods to the mediality of cinema—are perhaps as typical of Kiarostami's films as are long aerial takes of meandering cars. If Kiarostami is citing his own signature, then that is also his signature. Thus I want to disagree with Nancy when he writes that "there is no room for reflexivity" (18) in Kiarostami's cinema. Yet I also want to agree with the intuition that appears to be guiding Nancy's statement. For what's remarkable about Kiarostami's films is how his relentless problematization of the real, his dogged insistence on the mediality of the image, does not leave us in some Baudrillardian hall of mirrors, or quasi-Derridean free play of significations: if the opening sequence of this film is an example of "intertextuality," it is not because Kiarostami is spruiking some pop postmodernism. Rather, in problematizating the category of representation in this way, Kiarostami has been able to raise the question of the real in a new and profoundly affecting manner. His repeated attempts at turning our attention to the medium itself, to the very fact of film, do not produce a Verfremdungseffekt. Or if they do, this distancing is bound up with the powers of the films themselves. Note that this is not really paradoxical: my argument is that what Kiarostami shows is how the real can be evoked—or "evidenced," to use Nancy's term—precisely by undermining our attachments to the philosophical picture and cinematic frame of representation.
Close-Up (1990) can help explain what I mean. It is about real events: impersonating Mohsen Makmahlbaf, Hossein Sabzian conned a Tehrani family into letting him film their domestic life; he was eventually found out, and put in jail under suspicion of planning robbery. Kiarostami not only gained permission to film...
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of music therapy for acute and chronic sleep disorders in adults. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis. DATA SOURCES: A systematic search of publications in PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library without language restriction was performed. REVIEW METHODS: Studies with randomized controlled design and adult participants were included if music was applied in a passive way to improve sleep quality. Subgroup analysis was conducted to explore the sources of heterogeneity. RESULTS: Ten studies involving 557 participants were identified. The sleep quality was improved significantly by music (standard mean difference: -0.63; 95% CI: -0.92 to -0.34; p<0.001), with significant heterogeneity across studies. Subgroup analysis found heterogeneity between subgroups with objective or subjective assessing methods of sleep quality, and between subgroups with difference follow-up durations. No evidence of publication bias was observed. CONCLUSION: Music can assist in improving sleep quality of patients with acute and chronic sleep disorders. For chronic sleep disorders, music showed a cumulative dose effect and a follow-up duration more than three weeks is necessary for assessing its efficacy.
Students from 2 colleges, one predominantly White college and one predominantly Black college, completed a survey in which they reported aspects of their dream content as well as their degree of experience with various races and TV viewing preferences. The self-reported racial content of their dreams was then compared to their racial experiences in life. The proportions of races in participants' dreams reflected their own race as well as their interpersonal exposure to individuals of various races. There were some observed differences in racial dream content associated with preferences for particular TV genres and overall amount of TV viewing.
In the United States, the rise and fall of the opinion that we dream in black and white coincided with the rise and fall of black and white film media over the course of the 20th century, suggesting that our opinions about the coloration of our dreams are subject to cultural influences. This study generalizes that conclusion cross-culturally. Three groups of Chinese respondents, similar in age but differing in history of colored media exposure, were given questionnaires replicating those of Middleton (1942) and Schwitzgebel (2003). As expected, the groups with longer histories of colored media exposure reported more colored dreaming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In the 1950s, dream researchers commonly thought that dreams were predominantly a black and white phenomenon, although both earlier and later treatments of dreaming assume or assert that dreams have color. The first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of black and white film media, and it is likely that the emergence of the view that dreams are black and white was connected to this change in film technology. If our opinions about basic features of our dreams can change with changes in technology, it seems to follow that our knowledge of the experience of dreaming is much less secure than we might at first have thought it to be.
The aim of this research thesis was to investigate whether there are any cognitive factors that might influence reported dream colour. This question was prompted by the existence of a period of time in the early 20th century when the majority of people reported having greyscale dreams, and coloured dreaming was treated as an anomaly. On the level of individual differences, age, visual imagery abilities and memory for colour were singled out as the potential contributors to reports of greyscale television and the changes in the methodology of research were preliminarily identified as the possible causes of the historical trends in the colour of dreams, and the first empirical studies in this thesis address these issues. Subsequent studies explored the role of visual imagery ability, and individual differences in cognitive representation and memory in determining the reporting of colour in dreams. Overall a total of seven studies are reported The range of methods employed in these studies was diverse and required the development of new measures of colour memory and visual imagery. Some studies employed diaries to gather dream data and allowed cross-sectional (e.g. age) or cross-cultural comparisons. Others were more laboratory-based and explored data concerning visual memory and imagery performance with diverse dependent measures (e.g. response time data). In addition these studies involved the development of a novel coding scheme for visual dream content. While it was impossible to decisively support or disprove the idea that greyscale dream reports reflect genuine dream experiences, the research carried out for this thesis provided many fascinating insights into the factors that determine how we dream and how we report our dreams, highlighting the role of our cognitive abilities and preferences. Moreover, the studies have uncovered novel ways in which visual imagery preferences shape how we remember and report our experiences. The implications of these findings are important not just for the methodology of dream research, but for the whole field of cognitive and applied psychology School of Psychology
This study aimed to find out whether differences in the reported colour of dreams can be attributed to the influence of black and white media or to methodological issues. Two age groups, with different media experience, were compared on questionnaire and diary measures of dream colour. Analysis revealed that people who had access to black and white media before colour media experienced more greyscale dreams than people with no such exposure, and there were no differences between diary and questionnaire measures of dream colour. Moreover, there were inter-group differences in the recall quality of colour and black and white dreams that point to the possibility that true greyscale dreams occur only in people with black and white media experience.
Whereas the effect of sex and age on dream recall have been studied widely, socioeconomic status has rarely been investigated. However, two studies reported that higher socioeconomic status was related to greater frequency of dream recall. In the present sample of 612 Chinese students from three different schools, one elite (high socioeconomic status), one rural (low socioeconomic status) and one intermediate, analysis of variance indicated no significant association between frequency of dream recall and socioeconomic status. Researchers could investigate whether "dream socialization," e.g., encouragement of a child to remember his dreams, depends on socioeconomic background, whether these processes are mediated by culture.
Investigated the hypothesis that lucid dreams would be recalled as more emotionally arousing than nonlucid dreams. Adults (
n = 181) were recontacted after having participated in a month-long, day-by-day dream recording project and asked to provide additional information about their lucid dreams, that is, awareness of the dream while still in the dream. Two data sources, daily dream tally sheets and the Lucid Dreaming Questionnaire, were then factor analyzed. Several MANOVAs were also computed to determine possible structural and contextual differences between lucid dreams and 2 types of nonlucid dreams, namely, vivid and ordinary. Lucid dreams were found to be structurally distinct phenomena from vivid or ordinary dreams and were primarily characterized by a sense of control and balance. Regarding content differences between these dreams, it is concluded that lucid dreams are more perceptual, emotional, and cognitive than their counterparts. (24 refs) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study was based on a survey of a representative sample of 1000 Austrians who were questioned about their sleep and dream behavior. About two-thirds of the respondents reported that they generally recalled at least one dream per month. Dream recall frequency decreased with advancing age, but did not differ between men and women. Fifty-five percent of the respondents characterized the affective content of their dreams: 29% reported neutral, 20% positive, and 6% negative dreams. Four percent of the sample reported suffering from nightmares. These respondents more frequently reported snoring, interrupted sleep, daytime somnolence, anxiety and nervousness, depression, high dream recall, recurrent dreams, and dreaming in color. Twenty-six percent of the total sample reported that sometimes they realized during their dreams that they were dreaming. These respondents more frequently reported family problems, high dream recall, positive dream content, recurrent dreams, dreaming in color, and nightmares.
Findings from an analysis of 1000 dreams are presented in categories: dream setting, characters, plot action and interaction, dreamer's emotions, and color. The author concludes that "dreaming is thinking that occurs during sleep" with images (usually visual) rather than words. The thinking is egocentric and reflects the dreamer's problems, conflicts, fears, and hopes. Commonly appearing conflicts are mature independence vs. infantile dependence, good vs. evil, integration vs. disintegration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Questionnaires were distributed to 277 college sophomore men and women to secure data on the occurrence of colored dreaming and colored hearing. 99.97% of the subjects reported having dreams; 40% reported a lack of color in their dreams. Various comments made by the subjects about their colored dreams are presented; sex differences were apparent. 50% of the cases reported that they experienced colored hearing; numerous comments by these subjects are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In the 1950s, dream researchers commonly thought that dreams were predominantly a black and white phenomenon, although both earlier and later treatments of dreaming assume or assert that dreams have color. The first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of black and white film media, and it is likely that the emergence of the view that dreams are black and white was connected to this change in film technology. If our opinions about basic features of our dreams can change with changes in technology, it seems to follow that our knowledge of the experience of dreaming is much less secure than we might at first have thought it to be.
Colours seen in dreams by six observers were recorded from memory and plotted on a CIE u, v, chromaticity diagram. Only about half the dreams recorded contained colour, and in those in which colour appeared the more saturated purples, blues and blue greens were absent. It is suggested that during achromatic dreams the areas of the visual cortex which seem to respond only to colour may be inoperative. The paucity of blue in dreams could be anatomically related to the small population of blue units in the colour areas of the cortex.
Spoken personal names which were randomly presented during the rapid eye movement periods of dreaming were incorporated into the dream events, as manifested by the ability of the experimental subjects and an independent judge subsequently to match correctly the names presented with the associated dreams more often than would be expected by guessing correctly by chance alone. Incorporation of emotional and neutral names into the dream events occurred equally often. The manner in which the names appeared to have been incorporated into the dream events fell into four categories of decreasing frequency: ( a ) Assonance, ( b ) Direct, ( c ) Association, and ( d ) Representation. Perceptual responses to the stimulus names, as manifested by subsequent dream recall, occurred without any accompanied observable differential electroen-cephalographic or galvanic skin responses compared with those occasions on which no such perceptual responses were evident. The frequency of recall of colour in dreams was higher than has been previously reported.
The results are discussed in relation to the function of dreams and perception during dreaming.
With careful interrogation close to the time of dreaming, color was found to be present in 82.7 percent of the dreams. This figure is substantially higher than figures reported by previous investigators using questionnaire and other methods.