Dream Study Intro -
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What the Threat Simulation Theory (TST) of dreaming requires is further testing of its tenants if it is to be more accepted by the dream studies community. Few populations and fewer dream types have been evaluated with a TST approach. The following study compared the content of three dream types reported by American university students with a coding system resembling a hybrid of the Hall and Van de Castle dream coding system (1966) with the Dream Threat Scale (DTS) which has been used to content analyze most studies testing the TST (Valli, Lenasdotter, MacGregor, & Revonsuo, 2007). The reason for this composite coding approach was to expand the DTS into a system which could also account for themes and content which were not clearly of a threatening nature.
The Dreams Questionnaire used in the current study was designed as a means to collect a large amount of data from each participant in a short period of time (~15 min). In addition to asking participants to report their Earliest Remembered Dream (ERD), Most Important Dream, and Most Recent Dream, the 55 choices from the Typical Dreams Questionnaire (TDQ) (Nielsen et al., 2003) were used to quantify participants’ experience of these themes in their first remembered and most common dreams, as well as whether having experienced these themes at any point in their lives. By collecting full dream reports of varying types as well as TDQ data, both detailed (coding-intensive) and quick-to-analyze information could be obtained and compared from a single survey. Hosted on an online survey site - SurveyGizmo.com - the Dreams Questionnaire was made accessible by way of a link address to students. Additional data were also collected, including dream and nightmare frequencies which participants reported recalling in a typical month, age of earliest remembered dream and whether this dream was a recurring dream, and belief in lucid dreaming. The primary analyses with these data focused on frequency tabulation, and were compared to previous studies which used the DTS or were otherwise intended to test tenants of the TST. It was hypothesized that TDQ results would parallel the findings of Nielsen, et al. (2004), resulting in pursuit, falling, attack, and sexual themes as the highest endorsed. It was also expected that DTS frequencies would be high for pursuit, falling, aggression, and overall failures and misfortunes in dream reports, with half of all descriptions devoted to threatening content, paralleling previous TST studies (Valli & Revonsuo, 2009). The aim of this study was exploratory, intended as an attempt to cross-validate the DTS with the TDQ, while also acting as a suggestive template for future research. |