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Lucid dreaming in children
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1. Introduction
The term lucid dream designates a dream in which the
dreamer, while dreaming, is aware he or she is dreaming
(Tholey, 1983; LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990). In student sam-
ples, the percentage of people who report having had at
least one lucid dream in their lifetime ranges from 57.5%
(Gackenbach, 1991) to 73% (Blackmore, 1982) and 82%
(Schredl & Erlacher, 2004). In two representative surveys,
the gures were lower: 26% (N = 1000; Stepansky, Holz-
inger, Schmeiser-Rieder, Saletu, Kunze, & Zeitlhofer, 1998)
and 51% (N = 919; Schredl & Erlacher, 2011). Although the
percentage of people who report ever having had a lucid
dream is high, the actual frequency of lucid dreams – as
measured by keeping dream diaries – is relatively low; less
than 1% of dreams (Barrett, 1991; Zadra, Donderi, & Pihl,
1992).
Lucid dreaming research in children is scarce; even
though anecdotal report of lucid dreaming can be found in
the literature (Kimmins, 1973). Armstrong-Hickey (1988), for
example, reported that she was a frequent lucid dreamer
between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Hickey (1988) studied
four children (age range from 10 to 12 yrs.) who were trained
in lucid dreaming in the sleep laboratory (each child for four
non-consecutive nights). She obtained six eye-signal veri-
ed lucid dreams reported by two of the children (Hickey,
1988). The procient lucid dreamer can carry out pre-ar-
ranged eye movement patters within the dream and these
can be detected by the electrooculogram (EOG) because
the muscle atonia characteristic for REM sleep does not af-
fect the eye muscles (Hearne, 1978; LaBerge, 1979). So,
REM lucid dreaming can found in children.
One problem studying this type of dream in children is
the child’s understanding of dreams. Piaget (1978) found
that young children tend to think that their dreams are real
experiences and after several steps in cognitive develop-
ment (around the age of 9 or 10), the child understands that
dreams are internally produced images during sleep. More
recent studies (Wilson, 1991; Meyer & Shore, 2001), howev-
er, showed that most ve-year olds do perceive dreams as
internal mental processes. Yet the concept of lucid dreaming
might be more difcult to understand: a study in preschool
children (4 to 6 years) found that most children believe that
in dreams there might be a specic form of controlling the
action – while being aware that it is an ongoing dream (Qin-
mei, Qinggong, & Jie, 2006). The only large-scaled survey
(N = 611) on the frequency of lucid dreams in children have
been carried out by Lapina, Lysenko, and Burikov (1998).
The percentage of children reported having lucid dreams
ranged from 5% (10 years) to about 50% in (12 to 14 years);
very high rates (80-90%) were found in 15 to 18-year olds.
These authors found that a six-week training in different lu-
cid dream induction methods like MILD (Mnemonic Induc-
tion of Lucid Dreams; LaBerge, 1985), reality checks (Tholey
& Utecht, 1987) or re-dreaming (Gareld, 1988) in thirteen
10 to12-year-old children resulted in a high rate of lucidity
(92% of the children had at least one lucid dream).
The present aim was to examine lucid-dream frequency
in a large sample of children. Furthermore, the effects of
age and gender, and associations of dream recall frequen-
cy and nightmare frequency with the occurrence of lucid
dreams was studied. In addition, the book preferences of
these children were studied as possible associates of the
occurrence of lucid dreaming. We hypothesized that read-
ing fantasy and science-ction stories could be associated
with lucid dreaming because children who are interested in
bizarre stories might recognize bizarre elements in dreams,
which could trigger lucidity, or their interest in alternative
worlds might be associated with an ability to recognize they
are dreaming.
2. Method
2.1. Participants
The sample included 3579 children (2196 girls, 1383 boys)
with the mean age of 12.0 ± 1.9 yrs. The sample sizes for
the ages from 6 to 18 are depicted in Table 1.
Lucid dreaming in children: The UK library study
Michael Schredl1, Josie Henley-Einion2 and Mark Blagrove2
1Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany
2Department of Psychology, Swansea University, United Kingdom
Corresponding address:
Prof. Dr. Michael Schredl, Sleep laboratory, Central Institute of
Mental Health, PO Box 122120, 68072 Mannheim, Germany.
Email: Michael.Schredl@zi-mannheim.de
Submitted for publication: February 2012
Accepted for publication: April 2012
Summary. The term lucid dream designates a dream in which the dreamer, while dreaming, is aware he or she is dream-
ing. Whereas lucid dreaming has been studied in adults, large-scaled surveys in children are scarce. The sample here
included 3579 children for the ages from 6 to 18 who completed a brief questionnaire distributed in UK libraries. 43.5%
reported having had at least one lucid dream. As hypothesized, incidence of lucid dreams was most strongly associated
with the preference for reading fantasy/science-ction. Whether lucid dreaming might be benecial for children in skills
training or coping with nightmares are interesting topics for future research.
Keywords: Lucid dreaming, Children, Book preferences
International Journal of Dream Research Volume 5, No. 1 (2012) 95
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Lucid dreaming in children
2.2. Dream questionnaire
The questionnaire entitled “Dream lab: The big library ex-
periment” was devised by the Library Association (United
Kingdom) and Mark Blagrove. The rst section of the ques-
tionnaire included a question about types of book that the
child likes to read. The following instruction was given:
‘Please put a tick in the box next to any of the following
types of books that you like to read for leisure, that is, not
for school’. The categories of books were as follows: ction
(novels and stories), scary stories, history books, poetry,
fantasy/science-ction, arts and crafts, nature and science,
religious books, other fact books, puzzles/joke books, sport
and hobbies. The rst question of the dream section cov-
ered dream recall frequency, using a ve-point format: How
often do you wake up and recall a dream? 4 = 4-7 times per
week, 3 = 1-3 times per week, 2 = 1-4 times per month, 1
= 1-11 times per year and 0 = less than 1 time per year, or
never. The same scale was given for measuring nightmare
frequency including a brief denition for nightmares: “A
nightmare is a vivid dream that is frightening or disturbing,
and which you can remember clearly and in detail when you
wake up. How often do you have such a nightmare?”
The question about having lucid dreams was formulated
as follows: “Have you ever had a dream during which you
knew that you very dreaming? Yes/ No / Don’t know. Ad-
ditional denitions about lucid dreams were not given. For
the purpose of the analysis of whether participants had ever
had a lucid dream, the category Yes was used, and the cat-
egories No and Don’t know were combined.
2.3. Procedure
The dream lab questionnaire was distributed in libraries all
over the United Kingdom. The text explicitly stated that one
does not have to remember dreams, go to a library or read
regularly to ll in the questionnaire: this was in order to mini-
mize possible selection effects. The completed question-
naire could be returned to the library or sent to the Library
Association anonymously. For the present analysis, ques-
tionnaires completed by children from 6 yrs. to 18 yrs. were
included.
For testing the association of age, gender, dream recall
frequency, nightmare frequency and book preference on lu-
cid dreaming, logistic regressions was computed using the
SAS 9.2 for Windows software package (SAS Institute Inc.,
Cary, NC, USA). Due to missing values, sample sizes vary
slightly.
3. Results
In Table 1 and Figure 1, the lucid dream frequency is depict-
ed for each age group. Of the total group, 43.5% reported
having had at least one lucid dream. Many children checked
the “Don’t know” category (32.7%), whereas 23.9% of the
children clearly stated that they never had experienced a lu-
cid dream in their life. The percentage for boys (45.2%) was
slightly higher than for girls (42.4%) – a signicant difference
(see Table 2). The mean of the dream recall frequency scale
was 2.61 ± 1.25 (n = 3522), for nightmare frequency scale
1.47 ± 1.20 (n= 3554).
The logistic regression showed a signicant increase with
age in having had lucid dreams and a signicant gender
effect with boys reporting more often that they had lucid
dreams than girls (see Table 2). As expected, dream recall
frequency was related to having had a lucid dream, as was
nightmare frequency, although to a lesser extent.
In the second logistic regression, the book preferences
were included (see Table 3). This analysis with threshold of
p corrected in order to correct for multiple testing (p < .005)
found signicant associations with reading fantasy/science-
ction books and also ction. The association between
having had a lucid dream and fantasy/science ction book
preference could not be accounted for by any relationship
between this book preference and age: The correlation be-
tween age and preference of reading fantasy/science ction
books was non-signicant (r = -.006, p = .738, n = 3579).
Table 1: Percentage of children with lucid dreams
(N = 3540)
Age group Sample size Frequeny
6 yrs. 17 29.4%
7 yrs. 35 34.5%
8 yrs. 93 40.9%
9 yrs. 185 46.0%
10 yrs. 278 44.2%
11 yrs. 597 38.4%
12 yrs. 1063 43.6%
13 yrs. 687 43.1%
14 yrs. 338 49.7%
15 yrs. 143 43.4%
16 yrs. 65 53.9%
17 yrs. 23 60.9%
18 yrs. 16 56.3%
Figure 1: Percentage of children who have ever had a lucid dream
Lucid dreaming in children
International Journal of Dream Research Volume 5, No. 1 (2012)96
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Similarly, the correlation between the preference of reading
ction and age was not signicant (r =.008, p = .635, n =
3579).
4. Discussion
Overall, the ndings of the present study indicate that lucid
dreaming had occurred in about 45% of the participating
children; a gure which is comparable to adults (Schredl &
Erlacher, 2011).
Prior to discussing the ndings in detail, two method-
ological issues should be taken into consideration. First, the
present sample is not representative. It is likely that a selec-
tion bias might have affected the results, i.e., high dream
recallers may be more likely to ll in the dream question-
naire. However, as the relationship between lucid dreaming
and dream recall frequency was quite small, (standardized
measure of 0.169), any such overestimation of lucid dream-
ing frequency might not be too pronounced. The second
issue is about understanding correctly the denition of lu-
cid dreaming – an issue raised by Snyder and Gackenbach
(1988). These authors recommend eliciting sample lucid
dreams in order to check whether the participants have
correctly understood the denition. For adults, the rate of
non-lucid dreams reported as lucid dreams is below 2%
(Johnson, 2007). But, as Qinmei et al. (2006) reported, this
might be different for young children. So, it is necessary to
replicate the current study but with the use of interview or
other dream content reporting. As a considerable number of
children answered with “Don’t know”, it might be helpful to
use examples of lucid dreams typically reported by children
to help the children understand the concept. In view of this
nding, one might expect even higher prevalence rates in
children compared to the present study.
Whereas in adults, most studies (Gruber, Steffen, & Von-
derhaar, 1995; Stepansky, et al., 1998; Schredl & Erlacher,
2011) did not nd gender differences in lucid dreaming, a
small but signicant difference was found in the present
study. One explanation might be the connection between
frequency video game play and lucid dreaming (Gacken-
bach, 2006) because boys more often engage in comput-
er game playing than girls (Schredl, Anders, Hellriegel, &
Rehm, 2008).
The increase in age was expected because of the word-
ing of the question: “Have you ever had a dream during
which you knew that you were dreaming?” Simply as a re-
Table 2: Logistic regression for lucid dream occurrence
(N = 3473)
Variables SE1Wald χ2p -value
Age .0590 8.0 .0025
Sex (1 = male, 2 = fe-
male)
-.0514 7.1 .0076
Dream recall frequency .1694 68.0 <.0001
Nightmare frequency .0721 13.0 .0003
1 SE = Standardized Estimates
Table 3: Logistic regression for lucid dream occurrence in relation to book preferences (N = 3473)
Variable Frequency1SE2Wald χ2p -value
Age .0618 8.9 .0029
Sex (1 = male, 2 = female) -.0677 9.8 .0017
Dream recall frequency .1669 64.7 <.0001
Nightmare frequency .0759 11.1 .0002
Fiction (novels and stories) 61.1% .0619 8.9 .0029
Scary stories 53.5% .0166 0.7 .4042
History books 15.5% .0224 1.1 .2999
Poetry 28.3% -.0059 0.1 .7909
Fantasy/science-ction 36.3% .0641 9.7 .0019
Arts and crafts 17.9% .0514 5.6 .0180
Nature and science 16.0% -.0037 0.0 .8696
Religious books 6.6% .0186 0.8 .3760
Other fact books 15.4% .0096 0.2 .6609
Puzzles/joke books 48.1% -.0530 6.1 .0133
Sport and hobbies 26.9% -.0205 0.9 .3355
1 Percentage of the total sample reporting this book preference, 2 SE = Standardized Estimates.
International Journal of Dream Research Volume 5, No. 1 (2012) 97
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Lucid dreaming in children
sult of being older one would expect this value to increase.
It would be interesting to include a scale measuring current
lucid dreaming frequency and compare those to gures ob-
tained in adults. The study of Lapina et al. (1998) reported
that about 30% of the adolescents (age range: 14 to 17
yrs.) experience lucid dreams once or twice a week; a per-
centage that is much higher than reported by adults (4.9%;
Schredl & Erlacher, 2011).
That lucid dreaming is associated with dream recall fre-
quency is also very plausible because the chance to recall a
lucid dream increases with recalling more dreams. This rela-
tionship has also been found in adults, (Schredl & Erlacher,
2004). As lucid dreams can occur as a result of nightmares
(Wolpin, Marston, Randolph, & Clothies, 1992), the correla-
tion between nightmare frequency and lucid dreaming also
seems plausible. An alternative explanation of this correla-
tion might be that there are inter-individual differences in
physiological arousal during sleep producing more intense
dreaming; nightmares on the one hand and lucid dreams
on the other. Both types of dreaming are associated with
heightened arousal during sleep, (for a review see: Erlacher
& Schredl, 2008). Although lucid dreaming frequency and
nightmare frequency are both correlated strongly with dream
recall frequency, lucid dreaming frequency and nightmare
frequency are still correlated if dream recall is statistically
controlled for (Schredl & Erlacher, 2011), i.e., this correlation
is not explained by overall heightened dream recall.
The relationship between book preferences and lucid
dreaming is very interesting. As many of the categories were
not associated with lucid dreaming frequency, the signicant
associations with reading fantasy/science-ction and ction
books cannot be explained by reading a greater number of
books in general. These two associations also cannot be at-
tributed to age because these two reading preferences did
not correlate with age. One can hypothesize that children
who experienced lucid dreaming with its potential to inu-
ence the dream action, and to things that are not possible in
waking life, like ying, might, as a result, be more interested
in reading fantasy and/or science ction books. On the other
hand, reading such books might get the child interested in
lucid dreaming. Or the associations may be explained by an
underlying personality characteristic, such as absorption
or imagination (the latter having been associated with lucid
dreaming frequency in adults (Schredl & Erlacher, 2004).
Whereas several studies (Blagrove, Bell, & Wilkinson,
2010; Neider, Pace-Schott, Forselius, Pittman, & Morgan,
2011) linked lucid dreaming to performance in different cog-
nitive tasks, systematic research in children has not been
reported in the literature, although the Lipina et al. (1998)
study mentioned good school performance in children with
frequent lucid dreams. It would be very interesting if specic
cognitive abilities associated, for example, with the prefron-
tal cortex (Neider, et al., 2011), are related with the ability to
dream lucidly. On the other hand, lucid dreaming might be
used to enhance performance in motor learning – as be-
ing reported by athletes (Erlacher, 2005) and in a small eld
study (Erlacher & Schredl, 2010). In addition, there has been
a report of lucid dreams being used for coping with night-
mares (Spoormaker & Van den Bout, 2006); a technique
which might be employed if imagery rehearsal therapy as
the most effective nightmare treatment strategy (Simard &
Nielsen, 2009) is not working.
To summarize, lucid dreams occur to about 45% of chil-
dren, a gure that is comparable to that for adults. Also,
prevalence of lucid dreaming is associated with two book
reading preferences (ction and fantasy/science-ction).
The latter results indicate either a causal relationship in
some direction between lucid dreaming and these book
preferences, or the results indicate that there is some other
variable, such as personality, that results in having a lucid
dream and these book preferences. As lucid dreaming is
quite common in children, empirical research linking lucid
dreaming to waking cognitive abilities or studying the ben-
ecial effects of lucid dreams should be promoted in the
future.
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