Lucid dream consciousness, like waking and nonlucid dreams, is also framed by unconscious contextual elements. To understand the contextual structure of lucid dreams, we must look at the role played by consciously accessible memory across lucid dreams and waking. Lucid dreamers are able to freely recall details of waking life, to a greater or lesser extent, while within a lucid dream (LaBerge, 1985). Just as important, lucid dreams are remembered after awakening with a much higher frequency than nonlucid dreams, probably due to the presence of a mental set to remember in lucid dreams. Although it would be difficult to empirically ascertain, the anecdotal evidence suggests that at least some lucid dreamers remember their lucid dreams during waking at least as well as their waking experiences (LaBerge, 1985). In other words, lucid dreams contribute to the episodic memories of the waking personality. Therefore, in contrast to nonlucid dreams, there is a two-way transfer of consciously accessible memory between waking and lucid dream experiences. Thus, there is a relative continuity of consciously accessible memory linking lucid dreams and waking experience.
With repeated experiences of lucid dreaming, the associated memories of these experiences contribute to the formation of a stable and cumulative contextual structure in the mind of the waking self. This stable contextual structure we call the lucid dream context. The lucid dream context serves two complementary roles: (1) it serves as the global contextual structure framing lucid dream consciousness providing both precedent and antecedent structure to lucid dreams, and (2) it forms a situationally-dependent context within the waking personality. Regarding this latter point, lucid dreaming is a learnable skill (Moffitt, Hoffmann, et al, 1988; LaBerge, 1980, 1985; LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990). The full expression of this skill is dependent upon its occurrence during sleep, and is in this sense a form of situational cognition. The skill, however, belongs to the waking personality and shares features with other learned skills, particularly that it can be improved upon by learning and practice (LaBerge, 1980).
Thus, our distinction between lucid and nonlucid dreams is based on the contextual structure underlying dream consciousness: nonlucid dreams can be characterized by the formation of transient global contexts different from dream to dream, but lucid dreams are characterized by the presence of a distinct and persistent context, the lucid dream context. This lucid dream context belongs to both the waking personality and the lucid dreamer identity, serving as a bridge between them, and will continue to frame all future lucid dreams. The lucid dream context is susceptible to modification by learning and experience acquired in either the waking or lucid dream states.
There appear to be at least three essential components to the lucid dream context, each operating at a specific psychological level: (1) a “reference to state” operating as a metacognitive context, (2) a semantic contextual framework operating at the level of declarative knowledge, expectation and belief, and (3) a goal-option framework operating at the level of effector action.
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