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Dream Content; How Dream Content Differs Among People
Throughout the years curiosity about dreams has developed; as a result, we are becoming more interested in finding how the content of our dreams vary among different groups of people. Sometimes we link dreams to reality, for example when we dream about death we think of it as a precognition. Adding to this, we might also thinkthat nightmares and bad dreams are the result of certain traumas; but do we really know what causes these dreams? More often, people might even assure that they don’t dream at all. Thanks to research we now know that we all dream, the problem is that we forget about it or we just can’t recall our dreams. Just as this research has found an answer, other studies also found how dream content variesamong people with different health conditions. For example, does the content of dreams of persons with autism differ from other people? Also, does our mood or the environment where we are sleeping affect our dream content? What about mystical dreaming, and the dream content of preadolescent boys and girls?
Having in mind that sleep disorder is one of the characteristics of autism andknowing that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder can’t distinguish between a dream and real life (Daoust et al, 2008), it might be interesting to know if those dreams have a different content. To begin this research, 28 young adults with autism spectrum disorder and 79 individuals (without autism, control group) contributed by completing dream questionnaires; one of these questionnairesconsisted of 11 items on typical dream habits, for example the number of dream recalls and recall content, among others. In addition, the persons included in this research also reported the frequency of emotions such as joy, fear, sadness, relaxation, etc. in their dreams. Participants were also awakened during the night and were interviewed about what images, thoughts or feelings were going through theirminds before being awakened. Their dream content was divided into seven basic categories: characters, social interactions, activities, emotions, settings, objects, and descriptive elements, (negative emotions, positive emotions and face elements were also introduced to investigate some characteristics of ASD). The results of this research state that the recall of dream content was lower in peoplewith ASD; also, participants with ASD reported having fewer bad dreams. It is also interesting to know that fewer people with ASD reported confusion, shyness and sexual arousal in their dreams (Daoust et al, 2008). In short, this research found that participants with autism spectrum disorder presented fewer bad dreams, fewer emotions and fewer recollections of dreaming; besides this, suchcharacteristics of dreaming leads to the idea that they may reflect neurocognitive dimensions specific to this condition (Daoust et al, 2008).
Even though we might not be aware of the fact that the environment around us plays a role when dreaming, the truth is that “Sometimes elements of the outside world sneak into our dreams” (Hutson, 2010). In this research participants were pumped twodifferent kinds of odors into their noses during REM sleep. One of these odors was some kind of hydrogen, which is similar to the smell of rotten eggs; on the other side, the scent of a rose (phenylethyl) was provided. Perhaps because the olfactory bulb and the amygdala (emotion-processing) are connected the result was that flowers caused much more pleasant dreams! (Hutson, 2010).
Inaddition to our environment, our physical health, mood, and self-construal might also interact with dream content. Before this study - to examine the connection between dream content and physical health, mood or self-construal- was made, it was hypothesized that as physical health declined, references to physical health in dream content would increase (King &DeCicco, 2007). In this study physical,...