1、 papersdream.3rsNovember 7, 1996Corrected 10/30/98WE DO NOT DREAM OF THE 3 RS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NATURE OF DREAMING MENTATIONErnest HartmannDepartment of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine; Sleep Disorders Center, Newton-Wellesley HospitalKey Words: Dreaming, 3 “R“s, reading, writing
2、, arithmetic, connectionist netsRunning Head: No dream of 3 RsCorrespondence to: Ernest Hartmann, M.D.Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts School of Medicine27 Clark St., Newton, MA 02459page 1Summary: This report examines the extent to which dream recall which involves the “3 Rs“ (reading, writing, and a
3、rithmetic). Two separate studies were done. In the first study, two scorers rated, on a blind basis, a total of 400 written dream reports, available from five previous studies. There was perfect agreement between the two scorers. They agreed that there were no instances of reading, none of writing,
4、and one instance of probable calculating in the 456 dreams. The second study was a questionnaire survey. Complete responses were obtained from 240 frequent dreamers (who reported remembering a mean of seven dreams per week). The study examined in two ways the frequency of the “3 Rs“ in their recalle
5、d dreams. First, in answer to direct questions as to how frequently they dreamt about each activity, over 90% of the respondents reported that they “never“ or “hardly ever“ dreamt about each of four activities: reading, writing, typing, and calculating. In answers to other questions, this group repo
6、rted spending a mean of six hours per day engaged in these activities. Secondly, responses as to the relative prominence of six activities (walking; writing; talking with friends; reading; sexual activity; typing) in dreaming versus waking produced two clear groupings of activities. “Walking“, “talk
7、ing with friends“, and “sexual activity“ were each rated almost as prominent in dreaming as in waking whereas the second group consisting of “writing“, “reading“, and “typing“ were rated as far more prominent in waking than in dreaming. The two activity groups differed at p .0001. Thus, the 3 Rs app
8、ear to occur very infrequently in dreams. These findings are placed in a theoretical frame which suggests that dreaming (compared to waking) deals very little with serial activities characterized by “input rapid-processing output“ in which the neural nets function in a feed-forward mode. Rather, dre
9、aming may be characterized by relatively broad or loose connection making in which the nets function more in an autoassociative mode.page 2IntroductionThere is a widespread view that we can dream about everything and anything, that dreaming uses and recombines the entire contents of our memory syste
10、ms. Thus, Jung says, “Dreams may give expression to ineluctable truths, to philosophical pronouncement, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides.“ (Jung, 1933). A modern biological view that dreaming inv
11、olves random activation of material stored in the forebrain by brainstem activity (Hobson, McCarley, 1977) would also suggest that everything in our memory storage should appear in dreaming and that those of us with a lot of memories of reading, writing, etc. should certainly have dreams about such
12、activities. Likewise, the related view that dreams represent excess daytime material (junk) being discarded by the computer-like mind (Crick, Mitchison, 1983) would suggest that everything we experience and remember which has no great importance should appear in our dreams and thus our dreams should
13、 be full, for instance, of material we have read in newspapers and magazines.Any exceptions to the rule of “everything appears in dreams” may be helpful in elucidating the nature of dreaming mentation. The present study was designed to look into such a possible exception: anecdotally it appears that
14、 reading, writing and arithmetic (the “3 Rs“) common activities in our waking life play a very minor role in our dreams.More specifically, this study derives from a contemporary theory of dreaming (Hartmann, 1996; 1998) briefly summarized as follows: The mind can be seen as a complex net or (network
15、 of nets) consisting of a large number of simple units with varying connection weights between the units, which can be modeled roughly by connectionist net models as pioneered by McLelland and Rumelhart (1986). All that can happen during waking or during sleep is that activation flows along page 3th
16、e net, portions of the net are lit up and connections are made, strengthened, or weakened. However, there is a difference between dreaming and waking: In waking connections are made in a more-or-less direct, linear, serial fashion, remaining relatively close to pathways running from sensory input to
17、 motor output. In dreaming the net is not constrained in this way and connections are made in a broader, less serial and more parallel fashion, ranging farther from any connections to input and output. In this sense, dreaming involves the less structured or less “tightly woven“ portions of the net f
18、arther from input-output paths. Another less spatial way of picturing the difference is to consider the two basic types of “connectionist nets“ that have been modeled feed-forward nets and auto-associative nets (Figure 1). The suggestion is that in waking the net functions in a relatively more feed-
19、forward fashion, whereas in dreaming the net acts in a more auto-associative fashion. The theory then goes on to discuss that the broad connections are by no means random but are guided by the dominant emotional concern of the dreamer (Hartmann, 1998).On this model, then, relatively straightforward
20、serial activities with rapid input-output processing and a feed-forward form of processing, would be more consonant with the waking rather than the dreaming functioning of the net. For professionals, students, and white-collar workers, the activities of reading, writing or typing, and calculating ta
21、ke up a good deal of waking time, and are probably the clearest examples of activities involving rapid, serial, focused, feed-forward processing; therefore the model suggests that these might be relatively lacking in dreams.This is, in fact, consistent with an impression I have had in looking over a
22、 large number of my own dreams as well as laboratory and home dreams from a number of research studies. It is also consistent with a statement by Stephen LaBerge that lucid dreamers trying to read in their dreams have great difficulty in reading more than a word or two (LaBerge, 1985).page 4There is
23、 limited research work in the literature on the occurrence of reading, writing and arithmetic in dreams. Calvin Hall and his associates, in a number of studies involving content analysis of dreams, have reported on the frequency of various settings and activities in dreams (Hall, Van de Castle, 1966
24、). Though they do not discuss the 3 Rs specifically they have two categories that might include them. Under “settings,” they describe, “vocational settings,” as a rare setting for dreams, which in a sample of 1000 dreams (500 male, 500 female) occurred in 4.8% of mens dreams, and 5.2% of womens drea
25、ms. Under “activities,” they also have a subtype called “visual activities” which they define as including “a large number of words denoting visual activitiessee, notice, read, watch, peek, glance, view, inspect, and distinguish.” Their results indicate that overall 11.8% of male dreams and 12.4% of
26、 female dreams included such visual activities. Unfortunately, both the settings and activities categories are much broader than dreaming specifically of the 3 Rs, which are not investigated in themselves. Calvin Hall does provide one further hint. In a summary article reviewing his studies (Hall, 1
27、951), he states that “such common waking activities as typing, sewing, ironing, or fixing things were not represented at all in these 1000 dreams.” Strauch and Meier (1996) have collected and analyzed the content of 500 laboratory dreams as well as a large number of dreams collected at home. These a
28、uthors make no mention of the 3 Rs, nor do they mention activity and occupation categories which might include them.In this study the frequency of the 3 Rs in dreams was investigated in two separate ways. One involved a direct “content analysis” type of examination of actual written dreams from seve
29、ral different studies. This has the advantage of being objective, and gives an opportunity to check inter-rater reliability between scorers. On the other hand, it is time consuming and difficult to rate more than a few hundred dreams in this way. Furthermore, it is possible that a great portion of p
30、age 5dreaming may not appear in written reports, since the dreamer is pressed for time. Thus, it is possible that dreamers tend to write down only the most vivid or outstanding or unusual aspects of their dreams, and perhaps ordinary activities such as reading or writing might occur but simply not b
31、e mentioned in a typical written dream report.Thus the question was examined in a second way, using a questionnaire sent to a large number of good dream recallers, who were asked about whether they recall any 3 R activities in their dreams. This method is less objective, since one does not know exac
32、tly how many dreams or which dreams are being recalled and examined, but in a sense it casts a wider net: each of these dreamers might very well be able to recall many 10s or 100s of dreams, be able to review them, and be able to consider whether any reading, writing, etc. was done, even if the read
33、ing and writing had not played a very prominent role in any dream.Study 1: We obtained written dream reports from a number of different settings. In this study, a total of 456 dreams from five different studies were examined: 100 dreams from 100 male students made available by William Domhoff on-lin
34、e (Schneider, A., Domhoff, G.W., 1998); 67 laboratory dreams from 67 subjects, made available by Roussy (Roussy, et al., 1996); 68 dreams written down as part of an evaluation of 68 patients at a sleep disorder center (Hartmann, et al., 1998); 80 dreams from a recent student sample consisting of one
35、 “most recent dream” and one “dream that stands out” from each of 40 students (Kunzendorf, et al., 1997); and 141 written dreams from 115 students from a recent unpublished study by the author and associates. Except for the first group of dreams all samples were about half male and half female.Each
36、dream was read independently by two scorers (intelligent professionals and students, with no specific training in this task) who were given a sheet with three columns for scoring asking page 6them to score any instance of 1) reading or 2) writing word-for-word more than two or three words, or 3) cal
37、culating or arithmetic. Specifically, the scorers were given the following instructions: for reading, “Does the dream contain any instance of reading (a book, document, letter, etc.) which includes more than one or two actual words? Do not count simply seeing a sign with one or two words such as “No
38、 Exit” or “Dream Wonderland”; for writing, “Does the report contain any instance of writing, typing or word processing a series of wordsmore than two wordsDo not count writing or painting a brief sign. Do not count, for instance, “I was painting a sign that seemed to say Bach-fiends”; and for calcul
39、ating, “Any detailed description of doing an arithmetic problem, algebra problem, geometry problem or any more complex calculation in the dream.”Study 2: This was a questionnaire survey, sent to a group of good dream-recallers. A brief questionnaire, consisting of a single sheet printed on both side
40、s was mailed to all members of the Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD) residing in the USA; it turned out there were exactly 400 such members whose addresses were available at the time of the mailing. The questionnaire included two major questions about dreams. First, the respondent was asked
41、to estimate on a 5-point scale how frequently he or she recalled engaging in certain activities (reading,writing, typing, calculating) in dreams, and then asked how much waking time was spent per day on each of these activities. Second, the respondent was asked to estimate in turn the relative promi
42、nence of six activities walking, writing, talking with friends, reading, sexual activity, and typing in dreams as opposed to waking life. The three control items (walking, talking with friends, and sexual activity) were chosen as activities which were quite different from the 3 Rs but which also dif
43、fered greatly from each other in order to allow comparisons not only between the 3 Rs and the three other activities but also within the activity-groups which might help elucidate the findings. page 7The questionnaire also included questions about respondents age, sex, and dream recall frequency. Th
44、e data on the first question were simply tabulated and expressed as percentages; there are no statistical comparisons in these data. On the question of relative prominence of the six activities, the data representing six scores for each of the respondents were analyzed by pairwise t-tests.ResultsStu
45、dy 1: There was exact agreement between the two scorers on all 456 dreams, so there was no need for statistical measure of inter-rater correlations. Both scorers agreed that in the entire series, there were zero instances of reading, zero instances of writing or typing, and one instance of calculati
46、ng. On the single instance of calculating in the dream series, both scorers did score yes, but both placed a question mark and expressed some uncertainty as to whether it was definitely calculating. The relevant line in the dream read simply, “I was at my desk doing my math homework, when ” It is no
47、t certain whether calculations were actually done, or whether the dreamer simply sat at a desk with some math-related material in front of her.Study 2: 240 persons (60%) returned the questionnaire by the pre-established cut-off date, two months after the questionnaire had been sent out. The responde
48、nts were 68% female and 32% male with a mean age of 48 5 years. They were frequent dream recallers, as expected, reporting a recall of 6.8 5.8 dreams per week. Table 1 presents the results on the first question, tabulating the frequency in dreams of the four activities: reading, writing, typing, and
49、 calculating, as well as the amount of time spent on the same activities during waking. The results are quite similar across all four: For each about 90% or more of respondents (84%, 92%, 92%, 95%) answered that they dreamt either “never“ or “hardly page 8ever“ about it. Yet these subjects spent a great deal
