Interesting... visualization/association seems critical for prospective memory

I'm doing LaBerge's prospective memory training, and i noticed something interesting.

I have by far the most success with the prospective memory tasks when I visualize the target EXACTLY beforehand. For example, these were the targets for the other day's task, and what I visualized in the morning:

• Write - I visualized a pen in my hand and the sensation of me writing on a white sheet of paper
• Feel pain - I visualized stubbing my toe and yelling in agony
• Hear my name - I visualized my mother calling my name
• Drink something - I visualized drinking water out of a small cup

Now... the only targets that I HIT that day were the writing and the pain, and I think this is because they were exact matches with my visualizations. At one point in the day, I actually happened to stub my toe, and the realization that I had hit a target was instantaneous. I remembered that pain was a target before I even felt any pain :lol:

With the writing, I was writing with a pen on a white sheet of paper and came to the realization that I was writing after about 5 seconds of writing, probably because I had visualized the sensation of writing, and this took a few seconds to kick in.

I missed the other two targets, and I think this is because I didn't visualize specifically enough. I missed the targets all day long as I drank water out of large cups / things other than water, and as people other than my mother said my name.


So, I guess what I'm going to take away from this is that, in thinking of lucid dreaming as a prospective memory task as LaBerge did, it would be helpful to make visualize dreamsigns very specifically.

But how can you visualize about a very specific dreamsign that you don't know you're going to have? E.g., hallways appear in my dreams a lot, but they appear with varying shapes, sizes, colors, lengths, etc. Is there a way to make dreamsign visualizations stronger without making them so specific that they will never appear in your dreams?

First off Id like to say this is a very cool and very interesting topic you have brought up! And I like the ideas behind this a lot. But I agree with you, it would appear you would have to know what your going to be dreaming about in order to hit these targets in your dream. Since that seems very unlikely, that must not be it. So, from what I understand, and please correct me if Im wrong, the whole point of this is to get you to have more awareness in your actions during the day, so that it train you to become aware in your dreams. Sorta like daily reality checks....but with the objective of become aware...which is what you kinda do in reality checks...sorta.

So maybe we cant predict what our dreams will be but, we can assume what we will see. And if we assign targets to what we assume we will see or do, i.e. drinking water, writing or typing, looking in a mirror, ect. ect. So if we generalize enough when deciding our targets, then we might have a chance of doing it in a lucid dream. Which...doesnt seem like the most practical...

...Or maybe we are suppose to pick certain targets, do them enough to the point were we start to dreaming about the targets, and then do them in the dream, and become lucid. ???

What do you think? Im not sure...

Where did you get this "LaBerge's prospective memory training" Id like to read it if you dont mind.

Good post by the way :thumbup:

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So maybe we cant predict what our dreams will be but, we can assume what we will see. And if we assign targets to what we assume we will see or do, i.e. drinking water, writing or typing, looking in a mirror, ect. ect. So if we generalize enough when deciding our targets, then we might have a chance of doing it in a lucid dream. Which...doesnt seem like the most practical...

...Or maybe we are suppose to pick certain targets, do them enough to the point were we start to dreaming about the targets, and then do them in the dream, and become lucid. ???

What do you think? Im not sure...

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Hmm.. Well your first suggestion involves generalizing the targets, which like you say, doesn't seem practical because the act of generalizing reduces the quality of the association necessary to produce consistent hits. On the other hand, if you can create a visualization that is somewhat generalized but still specific enough for the target to hit in a dream, then you would benefit in this method by being able to hit a larger array of targets. Quantity over quality.

The second suggest involves crafting a very specific visualization and then hoping that it occurs in a dream... quality over quantity.

There's gotta be a way to have our cake and eat it too.... A quantity of quality hits! I'm thinking about creating a visualization routine something along the lines of this:

So, as I said, hallways appear in my dreams a lot. Not the same hallway - they come in lots of varieties. But what if I created 10 different visualizations for hallways of varying lengths, sizes, colors, etc? Spend time visualizing each of these 10 hallways, and imagining myself becoming lucid in each of them. This should increase the probability of lucidity because any random hallway that appears in my dreams is more likely to be similar to 1 of the 10 visualized hallways than it is to a single, generalized hallway visualization.

So everyday, I would visualize a long, red hallway and becoming lucid in it. A short, gray hallway. A dark, tall hallway. A brightly lit hallway with windows. Etc...

Just a thought.

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Where did you get this "LaBerge's prospective memory training" Id like to read it if you dont mind.

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It's in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge & Howard Rheingold page 76. How it works is: there's a list of targets for each day. E.g., Sunday is "I see an animal", "I look at my face in the mirror", "I turn on a light", "I see a flower." Different ones for each day.

You read and memorize all 4 targets each day when you wake up (this is where I do my visualizations, though the book doesn't say this). Then, you keep track of how many targets you "hit" each day, meaning, how many times you notice the first time a target occurs. So you can hit at most 4 targets per day (it's difficult) and LaBerge recommends that you get to the point where you can hit all for targets in a day before advancing to the MILD technique.