Last night I had the strangest dream: Varieties of rational thought processes in dream reports

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Consciousness and Cognition Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007) 838–849 www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Last night I had the strangest dream: Varieties of rational thought processes in dream reports Richard N. Wolman

a,*

, Miloslava Kozmova´

b

a

b

Harvard Medical School, 99 Summer Street, Suite 1600, Boston, MA 02110, USA Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, 72 Westland Avenue, # 101, Boston, MA 02115, USA Received 12 May 2006 Available online 8 December 2006

Abstract From the neurophysiological perspective, thinking in dreaming and the quality of dream thought have been considered hallucinatory, bizarre, illogical, improbable, or even impossible. This empirical phenomenological research concentrates on testing whether dream thought can be defined as rational in the sense of an intervening mental process between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, leading to a conclusion or to taking action. From 10 individual dream journals of male participants aged 22–59 years and female participants aged 25–49 years, we delimited four dreams per journal and randomly selected five thought units from each dream for scoring. The units provided a base for testing a hypothesis that the thought processes of dream construction are rational. The results support the hypothesis and demonstrate that eight fundamental rational thought processes can be applied to the dreaming process.  2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Thinking in dreaming; Thought processes; Rational thought process

1. Introduction The normal experience of waking from a dream filled with sensations, perceptions, and occasional bizarre imagery can be disorienting. Dreams might be filled with pictures and activities that do not exist or are impossible to perform in waking life. Even the usual sequencing of ordinary activities may be changed. Time can shift unexpectedly or a dreamer might find himself to be a part of an era from long ago. Also, people known to the dreamer may be transformed into the same people, but with different physiques and characteristics. Once awake, the dreamer is no longer separated from the reality of waking life and is now able to appreciate the counterfactual, odd, and unusual story line and the dream content. From a distance created in daylight, the metamorphoses of people, time, and activities are relegated to memory. The awake mind now deliberately distinguishes dreaming from waking and can reflect upon previous physical, emotional, and mental alterations associated with dreaming. These dream-to-waking transitions are considered typical, *

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.N. Wolman).

1053-8100/$ - see front matter  2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2006.09.009

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commonplace, and occur without raising concern. But what about thinking per se during dreaming; does it undergo the same kinds of changes that are similar to the occasional bizarre content of the dream experience? Thinking as a mental activity occurs in waking as well as in sleeping and it is common in all stages of sleep (Stickgold, Malia, Fosse, & Hobson, 2001; Fosse, Stickolgd, & Hobson, 2001). Dreaming thought in all its qualitative aspects is referred to as: cognition, sleep mentation, or dream mentation (Cicogna, Cavallero, & Bosinelli, 1991; Mamelak & Hobson, 1989; Rowley, Stickgold, & Hobson, 1998; Weinsten, Schwartz, & Arkin, 1991). Its investigation as part of a subjective experience narrated in written or oral form has been approached from psychological and neurophysiological viewpoints, and the results call attention to the labeling of a variety of thought occurring in dreaming that is comparable with its waking counterpart. 1.1. Psychological and neurophysiological investigations of dreaming thought The psychological studies that investigated thinking in dreaming concentrate primarily on its qualitative aspects. One qualitative feature of thinking in dreaming that is similar to its occurrence in waking is ‘‘verbal thinking’’ with its specific element termed ‘‘dream speech’’ (Kilroe, 2001, pp. 108–109). When using dream speech, dreamers engage their own linguistic capabilities and are able to converse with self or other characters, use different languages from their own, read and write, and hear other characters’ voices (Kilroe, 2001). Dreamers also use ‘‘reflection’’ and ‘‘deliberation’’ about the dreaming situations (Meier, 1993, pp. 63, 69). Other types of thinking reported in phenomenologically oriented studies include ‘‘inferential thinking, remembering, deciding’’ (Snyder, 1970, p. 139). In addition, cognitive activities measured on a self-reflectiveness scale revealed that dreamers are able to ‘‘think over an idea’’ as well as to have (the previously mentioned) distinct communications with others (Kahan, 1994, p. 181). These reported cognitive activities widen the scope of thought associated with dreaming. The reviewed psychological type of research did not test any particular theory, but rather explored the notion of thinking in dreaming per se. The quality of thinking in dreaming has been, however, questioned by researchers with a neurophysiological point of view who label the cognition associated with dream content as bizarre (Mamelak & Hobson, 1989). The authors characterize bizarreness of thinking in dreaming as ‘‘cognitive abnormalities (i.e., non sequiturs, ad hoc explanations, and explicit vagueness or uncertainty of dream thoughts)’’ (p. 202). This type of bizarreness that refers to actual thinking also needs to be distinguished from the bizarreness in the sense of ‘‘peculiar and distinctive cognitive aspect of dreaming’’ (Hobson, 1989, p. 157; Mamelak & Hobson, 1989) that is understood as ‘‘incongruity’’ of odd imagery, fast ‘‘discontinuity’’ of imagery or dream plot, and ‘‘uncertainty’’ of characters and locations (Hobson, Pace-Schott, & Stickgold, 2000a, 2000b, p. 1345). Cognition in this sense refers to an overall dreaming process and not simply to the qualitative aspects of thinking. Various other descriptions have been assigned to thinking in dreaming depending on which aspect of the dream thought was emphasized during any particular neurophysiological inquiry. With regard to a story line, thinking in dreaming is considered ‘‘logically deficient’’ because dreamers are not able to explain or even notice the dream’s plot bizarreness (Mamelak & Hobson, 1989, p. 204). If dreamers err in perceiving elements of dream as reality, their cognitive activities in dreaming are identified as hallucinatory mentation (Fosse et al., 2001). Other authors consider dream thinking illogical, improbable or impossible (Hobson, Hoffman, Helfand, & Kostner, 1987; Hobson, Pace-Schott, Stickgold, & Kahn, 1998; Muzur, Pace-Schott, & Hobson, 2002; Pace-Schott et al., 2001). The theory that most notably represents this deficient notion of thinking in dreaming is the activationsynthesis theory (Hobson & McCarley, 1977) and its subsequent AIM model (Hobson et al., 2000a, Hobson, Pace-Schott, & Stickgold, 2000b). Under both the theory and the model of dreaming consciousness, the authors deem the dream content in one of many stages of sleep, namely in REM sleep dreaming, as discontinuous with and irrelevant to thought occurring in the waking state. In addition, the model also proposes that dreaming thoughts, in comparison to waking thoughts, are illogical (Hobson et al., 2000a, 2000b). The advocates of this model further suggest that thinking in dreaming is a feature of a state-dependent consciousness and that the dreaming state is not capable of sustaining ‘‘directed thought’’ (Hobson et al., 2000a, 2000b, p. 842). Recently, however, the frequency of directed thought and hallucinatory thought in REM and NREM sleep has begun to be described (Fosse, Stickgold, & Hobson, 2004) and some authors even hint that the quality of thinking within the dream may not differ from waking thought (Kahn & Hobson, 2004).

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The quality of dreaming thought has also been addressed by a new neurocognitive model (Domhoff, 2003) that presupposes, according to Foulkes (1985), a ‘‘neural network for dreaming [that] contains enough cognitive processing areas, such as the medial frontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and perhaps, the orbital frontal cortex, to produce coherent dramatizations that often portray the dreamers’ conceptions and concerns in waking life’’ (pp. 209–213). The neurocognitive model contributes to our understanding of thinking within the dream by adding ‘‘the cognitive dimension’’ that activation-synthesis theory overlooked (Domhoff, 2003, p. 23). The theory describes continuity between waking thought and dreaming thought, particularly with regard to dream contents, which, as Domhoff’s (2003) argues, are ‘‘drawn from the same schemata and memory systems as waking thought’’ (p. 5). Years earlier, the predecessor of this theory was the phenomenological view of dreams expressed by Hunt (1982) who proposed that ‘‘complex thinking in dreams highlights the similarity between the dreaming and waking worlds’’ (p. 569, see also Hunt, 1989). In summary, the published research literature indicates that thinking in dreaming is variously labeled as: logically deficient and deranged; hallucinatory; comparable to waking thought; reflective and inferential; and imaginative (Fosse et al., 2001; Hobson, 1989; Kahan, 1994; Meier, 1993; Pace-Schott et al., 2001; Snyder, 1970). To date, neither the research nor the theory has discussed whether thinking in dreams could also be conceptualized as rational. Because this particular quality of dreaming thought has not yet been pointed out by either theory or research, and the adjective ‘‘rational’’ is predominantly connected with waking thought, the following two sections explain (1) the usage of the term as it is known from research with waking cognition and (2) the conceptual overlap between waking and dreaming thought and a suggested definition and characteristics of the term. 1.2. Rational thought in waking cognition Rational thought in the waking state (‘‘discriminating rationality’’, Shoben, 1961, p. 403) refers to an individual’s ability to notice and differentiate various aspects of his own subjective experience from known, objective data regarding present events or situations. Theorists propose that during this mental act, an individual, equipped by normative criteria that consist of rules of logic and probability (Shafir & LeBoeuf, 2002), examines his own feelings and explanations, then reasons and makes judgments and choices based on anticipated outcomes, while comparing conflicting goals and prior experiences (Shoben, 1961). The issue of rational thought in waking life is, however, not as straightforward as one might suspect. Stanovich and West (2000) in their paper about reasoning included summaries and reviews of research about everyday thinking. The authors make a point that there are hundreds of laboratory based experimental studies demonstrating that: people’s responses often deviate from the performances considered normative on many reasoning tasks. For example, people assess probability incorrectly, they display confirmation bias, they test hypotheses inefficiently, violate the axioms of utility theory, they do not properly calibrate degrees of belief, they project their own opinions on others, they allow prior knowledge to become implicated in deductive reasoning, and they display numerous other information processing biases (p. 645). While this description of thinking might seem to apply more to dreaming, the results of experimental studies mentioned by Stanovich and West (2000) are of waking mentation only. The debate over the causes of this divergence of thinking from normative reasoning that is considered rational thought is ongoing (Harman, 1995; Stich, 1990). Even though the reasons why people use this kind of thinking might not be clear, there seem to be, nevertheless, aspects of rational thought that are applicable to its occurrence in both waking and dreaming state. These unique features of rational thought have not yet been explicated and fully appreciated. 1.3. Definition of rational thought and its characteristics To study thought processes in dreaming and to begin to articulate the kinds of thought processes that might be found there, we offer, for conceptual purposes, the following operational definition of rational thought. The definition expands the discussion about reasoning and rational thought where Stanovich and West (2000) left

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off in their summaries and reviews and enhances the framework of thought processes in dreaming (Kahan, 1994; Kilroe, 2001; Meier, 1993; Snyder, 1970). It applies to thought in both the waking or dreaming state: Rational thought refers to a mental process that utilizes an individual’s internal logic and is based on an idiosyncratic belief system. This mental process intervenes between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, and leads to a conclusion or to taking action. This operational definition takes into consideration the human need to understand and make sense of the surrounding world (Baumeister, 1991; Sacks, 1987) and to regulate interpersonal and intrapersonal experiences (Higgins, 1996). The experiential continuum of sense-making includes both the waking and the dreaming worlds (Meier, 1993). A rational thought process begins when an individual registers sensory perceptions in the widest sense of the term (internal and external stimulation, memory, or any percepts that register in awareness). Next, an individual taps into the domains and modalities of his or her own experience, e.g., memory; self-knowledge, including the ability to recognize emotions and feelings; cognitive errors including habitual attributional errors, biases, and superstitions; available internal and societal beliefs; and understanding of one’s social role and social standing. The person then uses a wide variety of reasoning rules that include associations; connections; compare and contrast reasoning; combinations; conditional probability and exclusivity; evaluations; inferences; analogies; interpretations; extrapolations; intuitions; and induction and deductions (Harman, 1995; Sternberg & Smith, 1988). In addition, particular elements of a rational reasoning process may be linked together by connectives (e.g., ‘‘conjunctions’’, ‘‘conditionals’’, and disjunctions both ‘‘exclusive’’ and ‘‘inclusive’’; Shafir & LeBoeuf, 2002, p. 492). The rational thought process then resolves when an individual reaches either a satisfactory (or unsatisfactory) and reasonable (or unreasonable, e.g., illogical, counterfactual, or confabulatory) conclusion (Mullen, 1995; Sacks, 1987) that may (or may not) prompt him or her to taking action. The following two examples demonstrate a rational reasoning thought process and its components in the narratives of experiences from both waking and dreaming states. Both experiences are from one of the authors, (RNW), as part of the pilot phase of the present study. 1. Example of waking experience: From my office window looking north over downtown Boston, I can see the gold dome of the State House, behind which is the taller, modern glass structure of the Massachusetts General Hospital. At least once a day I watch a MedEvac helicopter fly toward the Mass General landing just out of sight on the helicopter pad atop the hospital. The vision of a plane - or any aircraft, flying slowly toward and disappearing into any building is an instant reminder of the horrible events of 9/11, an image indelibly etched into all of our minds and reactivated in me nearly every day. This report includes a sensory perception and memory (seeing the scenery of downtown Boston) followed by description of visual perception (watching an incoming helicopter). Next, the observer makes an evaluation based on the previous episodic memories (reminder of a past event), and arrives at two conclusions (personal belief that many other people share the same experience, and that the previously acquired image does not disappear from his own mind even with the passage of time). The examination of this narrative of waking life experience demonstrates that during this brief event, the owner of the experience utilized at least six various reasoning processes that fit the criteria of the operationalized definition of rational thought outlined above. 2. Example of a dreaming experience: I am in the shower area of the gymnasium. I am taking shower after playing tennis. I am looking out of a broken window, which makes it easy for me to see the playing field and the path leading up to the tennis court, although I cannot see the courts. The view is obstructed by bushes, just like the bushes that surround the outdoor tennis facility at Harvard. The glass is frosted, and if it weren’t for the fact that it is broken, I could not see anything. There is a tennis tournament, and my son’s team is playing in it. He is the coach. I wanted very much to see him, because I have not seen him in a long time, and I am concerned there won’t be enough time

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to finish my shower and get over to the courts. I felt anxiety at the thought of not seeing him, and longing, because I had not seen him for some time. Then I realized the tournament would take the whole afternoon, and the shower was only a few minutes, so I would in fact have enough time to get over to see him. I was greatly relieved because I knew I would be able to see him, give him a hug and find out how he was doing. This report starts with an action (looking out of window) followed by sensory perceptions (the dreamer sees the surroundings). From the sensory perception, the owner of this dreaming experience creates meaning based on reasoning (cannot see and knows why). In the next segment, the dreamer retrieves from memory his social role (being a father to a son) and remembers the occupation of his son (tennis coach). Then he expresses selfknowledge (longing to see the son; worries about the time management), and concludes with the sequence of thoughts that indicate self-regulation and resolution, planning, and action based on internal belief (acknowledgments of feelings; time management; and showing love by hugging the son). The examination of this narrative of dreaming experience illustrates that during his dream, the dreamer engaged in at least 10 various reasoning thought processes that fit the criteria of the operationalized definition of rational thought outlined above. The understanding of how thought processes are composed and described forms the basis for the analysis of the dream narrative. The following section reviews the methodologies that some researchers used for working with dream narratives in their particular research. 1.4. Narrative methodologies in dreaming studies Dreaming is a private, subjective experience, not observable by others (Strauch & Meier, 1996). Relaying an authentic dream experience by dreamers to researchers is generally possible through graphic, verbal, or written form (Antrobus, Fein, Jornad, Ellman, & Arking, 1991; Kahan, 1994; Montangero, Pasche, & Willequet, 1996). Although the transmission of dreamed material in the form of self-report could be considered unreliable due to the inadequacy of language itself or the differential verbal abilities of individual dreamers (Antrobus et al., 1991), researchers regard such reports as a substitution that factually represents dreaming experiences. This representation is considered an acceptable form of data in dreaming research (Pivik, 2000; Rechtschaffen, 1967; Smith, 2000). Domhoff (2003) also proposes that ‘‘dream reports provide a sound basis for understanding both the formal structure and content of dreaming’’ (p. 40) and, as Smith (2000) also points out, the content analysis discloses ‘‘properties of texts’’ (p. 315) and the qualities, characteristics, and intricacy of the investigated phenomena. Even though, as Strauch and Meier (1996) suggest, participants in studies may add various interpretations and additional observations to their dream reports, reporting dreams, as Pivik (2000) argues, is less likely to contain fabrications, lies, and confabulations (Pivik, 2000) because the participants tend to accept dream events as part of their lived experience without the involvement of internal censorship. In some dreaming studies, dream material is prepared for analysis, scoring or extrapolation of data according to the investigated elements of dream reports and available methodology. With regard to the qualitative analysis of dreaming narratives, basic research data are sequences of individual units that maintain the context of the report (Antrobus et al., 1991). These scoring units are variously named in relation to researched hypotheses and according to the method used for data extraction from dream reports. For example, an extraction of an ‘‘information unit’’ for investigation of self-reflectiveness reported in dreaming reports was obtained by a method called ‘‘parsing’’ that concentrates on sentence syntax in written dream reports (Darling, Hoffmann, Mofitt, & Purcell, 1993, p. 12). Research on slow wave dreaming adopted a thematic approach that focused on division of the dream reports into ‘‘thematic units expressing an action or complete concept’’, and any additional new unit was announced by a reported ‘‘change in characters, in the prevailing activity or in the setting’’ (Cavallero, Cicogna, Natale, Occhionero, & Zito, 1992, p. 563). Research of dream bizarreness utilized a lexical approach and concentrated on the identification of discrete ‘‘elements’’ with ‘‘genuinely novel (non-reduntant) information’’ (Revonsuo & Salmivalli, 1995, pp. 173–174). And in the protocol for investigation of new information added by

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dreamers in supplementary morning interviews, a ‘‘semantic unit’’ was determined to be any new description not occurring in previously written night reports (Montangero et al., 1996, p. 135). With regard to the investigation of rational thought, there was no available methodology suitable for the purposes of our study. For this reason, the authors developed a methodology for the extraction of dream narratives thought units that is described in the procedure section. 1.5. Hypothesis Our study followed the new neurocognitive model (Domhoff, 2003) which considers the dream content narrated in the waking state a hallmark of the sleep state, and the phenomenological perspective (Hunt, 1982) which advocates the complexity of dream thought parallel to waking thought. We postulated that if the relationship between the dreaming and waking state is as strong as theorists Domhoff (2003) and Hunt (1982, 1989) suggest, then one could delineate various kinds of thought processes that might exist in dreaming. Our study attempts to address two questions about the quality of thought in dreaming: (A) Can the reported thinking that occurs during dreaming be described as rational, just as it would be in the waking state? (B) Do the cognitive thought processes in dreaming share the peculiar, bizarre and unrealistic qualities of the mental content of the dream; or, are they, in fact, significantly different from the content and possess their own characteristics? Our study also tested a methodology for delimiting thought units. Once the content of the dreams was separated from the thought process structure by which the dream narrative is constructed, we then sorted and categorized thought processes for further examination. We wanted to discover whether these thought processes could, indeed, be labeled rational according to our operational definition. The concepts guiding this phenomenological empirical study are contained in the following hypothesis: Although a dream’s images, environments and content may, on occasion, be bizarre, and the dreamer’s attention might be dissociated from acknowledging their fantasticality within the dreaming state, the thought processes by which the dream is constructed are rational. 2. Methods 2.1. Sample The convenience sample of the study consisted of ten unpaid volunteers, five males ranging in age from 22 to 58 years and five females, ranging in age from 25 to 49 years. Participants’ occupations varied considerably and included a lawyer, a supervisor on a psychiatric ward, a consultant/coach, researcher, research associate, research assistant, stock broker, and three administrative assistants. In addition, 6 of the 10 participants pursued graduate degrees. For two participants, English was their second language. Participants were recruited indirectly; they heard about the study either from their classmates or coworkers and wanted to participate; or they learned of our work in casual conversation and expressed a desire to be part of the study. Two of the subjects also participated in our previous study on self-awareness in dreaming (Kozmova´ & Wolman, 2006) and expressed their interest and availability for the present study. Participants kept dream diaries for a period of 14 consecutive days. They were told that the purpose of the study was to investigate the structure of dreams. They were then assured about the confidentiality of all material written in their dream diaries. After giving participants oral instructions about how to record their dreams in a dreaming journal, we avoided bias by not having any contact with the participants until they returned their journals. We also debriefed them after the study. 2.2. Procedure During their 14 consecutive days of dream reporting, participants recalled a total of 103 dreams (M = 41; F = 62). Individually, the number of the dream journal entries varied between 5 to 10 dreams (males) and 5 to

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30 dreams (females). Given the absence of a suitable methodology for working with the dream narrative, we developed our own technique for extracting analyzable units of data. 2.3. Methodology for data extraction The substance of verbal or written dream reports from dreamers consists of a complex configuration that contains three overarching components: (1) external commentary irrelevant to the content of dream; (2) the basic description of the dream story; and (3) additional details that work upon the basic story line. The external commentary contains musings, explanations, or interpretations that are reminiscent of diaries or day journals in which individuals sometimes express their life circumstances. An example of such a journal entry is the statement: ‘‘I went to bed late and I had a headache’’. The basic story line might include bizarre, improbable, or impossible aspects of the dream narrative. The story line or dream scenario follows the same rules in stories of reported dreams or waking events (‘‘where’’, ‘‘when’’, ‘‘what’’, and ‘‘who’’, Kahan & LaBerge, 1996, p. 237). It presupposes some episodic memory active during experienced events (Tulving, 2002). The statements ‘‘There is a tennis tournament’’ and ‘‘I am taking a shower after playing tennis’’ represent a basic story line which does not contain any bizarre elements, but in many other dreams the story line might contain bizarreness (e.g., ‘‘but the car was invisible until he turned the key and started the engine’’). The additional details work upon or ‘‘play upon’’ the basic story line of the dream, and they are the elements that create the thought unit. We operationalized this component of the dream narrative into the following definition: One thought unit is any part of a reported dreaming narrative that is coherent, and analyses, explains, or elaborates the descriptive dreaming experience. The thought units are exemplified in the following statements: ‘‘I am concerned that there won’t be enough time to finish my shower and get over to the courts’’ and ‘‘I felt anxiety at the thought of not seeing him’’. The data extraction process, termed delimiting of thought units, consists of the following three steps. First, in the written narrative we separated situational commentary external to the dream itself from the actual dream material. As a second step, we noted the bare story line in the dream narrative. The third step is the actual extraction of the thought unit, which is the articulated component of the dream narrative that analyzes, explains, or elaborates the descriptive dreaming experience. By the extraction of scorable units of analysis, we released from the dreaming narratives those cognitive processes that perform cognitive operations on the descriptive story. 2.4. Analysis of thought units To achieve an individually typical representative sample of thought units that would also serve as a pool of the variety of thought processes found in dreams, from each of the ten participants, we randomly selected from each journal four dreams with more than 100 words. From the selected 40 dreams, we extracted with the delimiting process a total of 454 thought units. Individual dreams contained anywhere from 5 to 27 thought units. From each of the 40 delimited dreams we then randomly selected 5 thought units. Thus we had total of 200 thought units suitable for scoring (4 dreams · 5 units · 10 participants). Prior to scoring the extracted thought units, we developed The Code Book of Rational Thought Processes. The samples of thought processes we used in the pilot phase of the study for the development of the coding book were generated from dream narratives accessible in the dream archive at the Neurophysiology Laboratory, Harvard Medical School. In creating the code book, we randomly selected the dreams and delimited them into thought units. We then thematically organized these hundreds of random samples of thought units according to the experiential domains and modalities the dreamers used to express their dreaming experiences. We considered these domains and modalities to be a reflection of a predominant internal organization of thought, from which we made inferences about thought characteristics. (Smith, 2000). We then named the types of thought processes according to the prima facia relationship between the dreamers’ reports and an experiential domain and/or modality upon which the coherent parts of analyzing, explaining or elaborating elements within the thought units were articulated. For example, a report of

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‘‘seeing’’ within the dream we considered synonymous with visual sensory perception; thus the statement ‘‘which makes it easy for me to see the playing field and the path leading up to the tennis courts although I cannot see the courts’’ would be considered an example of perceptual thought which specifically utilizes visual perception. In addition, this statement also contains an evaluation, which would then make this thought process also an analytical one. When the dreamer reported identified feelings and that he reasoned and reached a logical conclusion based upon his self-knowledge, e.g., ‘‘I felt anxiety at the thought of not seeing him, and longing, because I had not seen him for some time’’, we considered this statement to be representative of an affective thought process as well as an executive thought process that utilized overt logic. The coherent part of any dream narrative that we regard as a thought unit generally consists of more than one experiential domain and/or modality. This fact reflects the complexity of dreaming cognition. For example, the thought unit ‘‘Then I realized the tournament would take the whole afternoon and the shower was only a few minutes’’ contains the domain of thinking (‘‘I realized’’), the concept of time (‘‘it would take the whole afternoon’’ and elements of comparison, and evaluation (‘‘the whole afternoon’’ vs. ‘‘a few minutes’’). For this reason, it became obvious that scoring thought units often includes more than one applicable score which corresponds to any of a number of individual categories of thought processes. During the pilot stage of the study, we were able to infer eight fundamental categories of thought units that seemed to fit our operational definition. We then organized these categories, along with their detailed description and examples, into a coding book. To make sure that our coding assessed what we intend to evaluate, we periodically presented our work for review at various scientific conferences.1 Table 1 contains the variety of thought categories, their abbreviated descriptions, and examples. Table 1 Categories of thought processes, abbreviated descriptions, and examples Category

Description and example

1. Analytical

Comparing and contrasting, evaluating, reason, logic, reflection, contemplation. (‘‘I am thinking that this looks like an exam in geography and not in painting.’’)

2. Executive

Higher order cognitive processes. Decision making, problem solving, planning, and agency. (‘‘I made a decision to go further.’’)

3. Subjective

Personal history, characteristics, appearance, beliefs, needs and desires, skills, and goals. (‘‘I want to take her to the king to punish her.’’)

4. Memory and time awareness

Remembering and recall. Recognition of characters, history, events, abilities, time, and dreaming state. (‘‘I am running out of time.’’)

5. Perceptual

Paying attention to visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and kinesthetic occurrences. (‘‘Hearing that, I look again.’’)

6. Affective

Distinguishing, naming and/or verbalizing the spectrum of feelings and psychophysiological states. (‘‘I am very upset.’’)

7. Intuitive/Projective

Assumption, lack of sufficient facts, erroneous attributions. (‘‘He seems friendly, but uncooperative.’’)

8. Operational

Reading, writing, counting, measuring (‘‘I walk into a lecture room with about 50 people sitting)

Note: From ‘‘Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream: Rational Thought Processes in Dreaming,’’ by M. Kozmova´ and R. N. Wolman. Paper presented at the conference ‘‘Toward the Science of Consciousness,’’ Tucson, Arizona, April 7-11, 2004. 1

The authors express our gratitude to members of the committees of scientific conferences who acknowledged and critiqued our exploratory efforts.

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For the actual scoring of thought units in this exploratory study, we realized that thought categories do not qualify for using any known quantifiable statistical method because of their characteristics: thought units do not contain any coding dimensions such as level, intensity, or degree of information that would make them comparable based on these quantifiable features. For this reason we developed scoring criteria which contained three scoring essentials: (1) a matrix of eight fundamental thought processes with their scoring abbreviations that noted the presence of any of the eight categories of thought, including a ‘‘not applicable’’ option; (2) distinctive possibilities of analyses, explanations, or elaborations as they occurred within the dreaming situations, events, and encounters, and which dreamers deem necessary to report in their dream narratives; and (3) examples of such reports. 2.5. Interrater reliability The thought units were scored by two independent judges, blind to the hypothesis, who had been trained in using the Code Book of Rational Thought Processes. The raters scored the thought units using hard copy rather than an electronic version. By using hard copy we wanted to ensure that the raters would use their coding skills within the same medium we used for training purposes, instead of any web-based habit of perusal of materials visible on a computer screen (Gordon & Gad, 2005) for which we did not train them. The goal of the study was to explore the varieties of thought processes that could be considered rational according to our operational definition of rational reasoning. The scoring of thought units reflects this fact. Both trained independent judges scored 200 thought units and assigned 232 agreed-upon codes denoting the eight fundamental categories of rational thought. The ‘‘not applicable’’ scoring option was used only once by one of the judges. As noted earlier, each thought unit might be rooted in one or more experiential domains and modalities that dreamers use in reporting their dreaming experiences. As is customary in this type of exploratory study, for the purposes of interrater reliability of textual material, each scored thought unit on which both judges agreed was considered an agreement (Smith, 2000). The overall percentage of agreement between the judges across all 200 thought units was 91%. 3. Results With our delimiting methodology, we were able to extract the thought units from the subjects’ dreams. The reported thinking that occurs during dreaming was represented by the random selection and scoring of 200 thought units. The scoring resulted in the confirmation that all eight categories of rational thought were present in the randomly selected dreams. The two independent judges agreed on 232 identical codes for the 200 selected thought units. The scoring further revealed that the participants in our study used analytical thinking (27.6%) most often. Analytical thinking is comprised of comparing and contrasting, evaluating, reasoning, using logic for conclusions, reflecting, contemplating about the dream situations and events, and coming to a conclusion. An illustration of an analytical thought process is the statement ‘‘I express amazement as I had expected a simple civil proceeding and have no knowledge of a criminal case’’. This and following examples show the intricacy of the dream thought processes and how more than one score may be necessary for any individual dream unit. Analytical thinking was followed by the next most frequent category, namely perceptual thought (22.4%). Perceptual thought is based in visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and kinesthetic occurrences that dreamers are aware of and pay attention to. An example of a visually based perceptual thought process is the statement ‘‘I saw that everyone in the room was crouched down on the floor using tables and chairs as shields’’. The third most frequent rational thought processes were memory and time awareness (15%). These processes include remembering, recall and recognition of characters from waking life, places, events, abilities, time in all its facets, and recognition of the dreaming state. These types of thoughts are demonstrated by the statements ‘‘I see a map of Europe sketched on it’’ and ‘‘when September 1 came, the woman said: ‘‘This is the end of summer’’. Affective thought (9.5%) was one of the less frequently used rational thought process. This thought expresses the dreamer’s ability to name any of a full spectrum of psychophysiological states, as well as an ability to

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Table 2 Categories of Thought Processes and Their Distribution Category

Frequency of occurrence (N = 232 total scores)

%

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 5. 6. 7.

64 52 35 22 17 17 16 7

27.2 22.4 15.0 9.5 7.3 7.3 6.4 4.7

Analytical Perceptual Memory and time awareness Affective Executive Subjective Intuitive/projective Operational

recognize these states in other dream characters. Examples of this emotional intelligence are the statements ‘‘I feel scared, sad, mad, and quite confused by this carnage’’ and ‘‘I felt she was upset’’. Usage of affective thought was closely followed in frequency by executive thought (7.3%), which includes decision making, planning, problem solving, and agency (acting on one’s behalf), and by subjective thought (7.3%) which includes revealing personal information about oneself including personal history, beliefs, needs, desires, skills, and goals. The statement ‘‘I was attempting to learn the stroke with them’’ illustrates executive thought; and subjective thought is demonstrated by the statement ‘‘My friend, the nurse I work with, is already at the dance’’. Two categories of rational thought which were the least used were intuitive thought (6.4%), which incorporates the dreamers’ assumptions without sufficient facts that would confirm the guesses dreamers make in their dreams; and operational thought (4.7%) which makes use of the dreamer’s reading, writing, counting, and measuring abilities. An example of intuitive thought is the statement ‘‘It seems that he is not going to leave soon’’. The statements ‘‘The hole is about 40 cm in diameter’’ and ‘‘I read about it in newspaper’’ illustrate measuring and reading abilities employed during dreaming. The distribution of the rational thought processes can also be found in Table 2. 4. Discussion Using our operational definition of rational thought as ‘‘a mental process, using an individual’s internal logic and idiosyncratic belief system, which intervenes between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, and leads to a conclusion or to taking action’’, it seems clear that the thought that occurs during dreaming (as reported) qualifies for the label of rational. In addition, by articulating the wide variety of categories of rational thought, one can begin to appreciate the complexity of thinking during dreaming. In this sense, varieties of rational thought could apply every bit as much to thinking during dreaming as to thinking during wakefulness. Equally important is the notion of the distinction between ‘‘directed thought’’ and ‘‘hallucinatory thought’’ during dreams (Fosse et al., 2004). The assumption of these researchers is that there is a division between the two ‘‘types’’ of mental processes and that they are differentially represented in NREM and REM sleep. Our findings, though, suggest that, however, bizarre and hallucination-like a dream may appear to the dreamer, the thought processes that support these cognitions and percepts are, in themselves, rational. Thought processes in dreaming, in fact, are distinguishable from each other and they maintain their own discernable characteristics. What we have tried to demonstrate is that the separation of the content of the dream and the means by which the dream functions is necessary for understanding the basis on which the dream is built. Consequently, any dreamer – you or I – could have a dream tonight that would be considered ‘‘strange’’ by any conventional standard. Nevertheless, our data support the notion that the strangeness of the dream, the manipulation of the symbols, the psychological reactions and the interrelationship of the components of the dream are, themselves, part and parcel of the rational thought that supports the dream and can carry it to consciousness. 5. Suggestions for future research Our investigation into the question of rational thought in dreams is only the beginning of what we hope will become an area of interest for other researchers as well. Some questions have been answered, many remain.

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What, for example, might one expect in comparing different groups of individuals in terms of their dreaming thought processes? Are there differences between men and women in the types of rational thought categories that predominate their dream thinking? Can we meaningfully speak of dreaming ‘‘styles’’ for individuals or groups; and do these dreaming styles, if they exist, correlate with measures of personality? With the new methodology we have created, we believe that it is possible to examine these, and, as yet, unformed questions about the nature of thinking in dreaming. Acknowledgments During the preparation of the manuscript, the authors presented its various sections at the following conferences: ‘‘Nineteenth International Conference of The Association for the Study of Dreams’’, June 2002, Tufts University, Boston, MA; ‘‘Toward a Science of Consciousness 2003: Between Phenomenology and Neuroscience’’, July 2003, Prague, Czech Republic; ‘‘Toward a Science of Consciousness 2004’’, April 2004, Tucson, AZ; Harvard Medical School, Continuing Education Division, ‘‘Sleeping and Dreaming’’, Boston, MA, 2005. We wish to thank the conference chairpersons and selection committees for their cooperation and encouragement in the presentation of early stages of this research. References Antrobus, J. S., Fein, G., Jornad, L., Ellman, S. J., & Arking, A. M. (1991). Measurement and design in research on sleep reports. In S. Ellman & J. S. Antrobus (Eds.), The mind in sleep: Psychology and psychophysiology (pp. 83–121). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Baumeister, R. (1991). Meanings of Life. New York: The Guilford Press. Cavallero, C., Cicogna, P., Natale, V., Occhionero, M., & Zito, A. (1992). Slow wave sleep dreaming. Sleep, 15, 562–566. Cicogna, P., Cavallero, C., & Bosinelli, M. (1991). Cognitive aspects of mental activity during sleep. American Journal of Psychology, 104, 413–425. Darling, M., Hoffmann, R., Mofitt, A., & Purcell, S. (1993). The patterns of self-reflectiveness in dream reports. Dreaming, 3, 9–19. Domhoff, G. W. (2003). Scientific study of dreams: Neural networks, cognitive development, and content analysis. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Fosse, R., Stickolgd, R., & Hobson, J. A. (2001). Brain-mind states: Reciprocal variation in thoughts and hallucinations. Psychological Science, 12, 30–36. Fosse, R., Stickgold, R., & Hobson, J. A. (2004). Thinking and hallucinating: Reciprocal changes in sleep. Psychophysiology, 41, 298–305. Foulkes, D. (1985). Dreaming: A cognitive-psychological analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gordon, D., & Gad, A. (2005). The education of story lovers: Do computers undermine narrative story sensibility? Curriculum Inquiry, 35, 133–160. Harman, G. (1995). Rationality (2nd ed.. In E. E. Smith & D. N. Osherson (Eds.). Thinking. An invitation to cognitive sciences (Vol. 3, pp. 211–275). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Higgins, E. T. (1996). The ‘‘self digest’’: Self-knowledge serving self-regulator. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1062–1083. Hobson, J. A. (1989). Sleep. New York: Scientific American Library. Hobson, J. A., & McCarley, R. W. (1977). The brain as a dream state generator: An activation synthesis hypothesis of the dream process. American Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 1335–1348. Hobson, J. A., Hoffman, S. A., Helfand, R., & Kostner, D. (1987). Dream bizarreness and the activation-synthesis hypothesis. Human Neurobiology, 6, 157–164. Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Stickgold, R. (2000a). Consciousness: Its vicissitudes in waking and sleep. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The new cognitive neurosciences (pp. 1341–1354). Cambridge: MIT Press/Bradford Book. Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Stickgold, R. (2000b). Dreaming and the brain: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 793–842. Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., Stickgold, R., & Kahn, D. (1998). To dream or not to dream? Relevant data from new neuroimaging and electrophysical studies. Current Opinions in Neurobiology, 8, 239–244. Hunt, H. T. (1982). Forms of dreaming. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 54, 559–563. Hunt, H. T. (1989). Multiplicity of dreams: Memory, imagination, and consciousness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kahan, T. L. (1994). Measuring dream self-reflectiveness: A comparison of two approaches. Dreaming, 4, 177–193. Kahan, T. L., & LaBerge, S. (1996). Cognition and metacognition in dreaming and waking: Comparisons of first and third-person ratings. Dreaming, 6, 235–249. Kahn, D., & Hobson, J. A. (2004). State-dependent thinking: A comparison of waking and dreaming thought. Consciousness and Cognition, 14, 429–438. Kilroe, P. A. (2001). Verbal aspects of dreaming: A preliminary classification. Dreaming, 11, 105–113. Kozmova´, M., & Wolman, R. N. (2006). Self-awareness in dreaming. Dreaming, 16, 196–214.

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