My Dissertation - The effect of external stimuli on dream experience

Greetings dreamers.

I am preparing for my Psychology dissertation for my final year of University. The title of this thread says it laconically, but my main research question right at the moment is: "Can a common external auditory stimulus produce similar dream experiences across different people?" My predictions are that it will, and in order to verify that, I will run some experiments here in the University's sleep lab, and then analyse the data using Q-Methodology.
That means that I need lots of fine data for my Q-sample, notably, how dreams are subjectively experienced. I thought I'd look here for some useful data; I've yet to run this past my supervisor, but this indeed seems to me like a fine source. I'm using information obtained from academic literature on this subject nature as well.
So anyone who is willing to help me here is greatly appreciated. All I need are some sample dream experiences, preferably your most recent ones, from which I can generate Q-sample statements. The question I'm asking you is: "How did it feel to have your most recent dream?"
If you feel like putting forward a contribution, then please provide your most recent dream report, in as much detail as you can. You may post it here. Remember that I am emphasising how the dream was subjectively experienced, not just what you dreamed about. If you can, try and summarise the overall feeling of the dream in a single statement, at the end of your dream report, and label your statement as: "My Statement". If you have a recent dream experience in which an external sound was incorporated into the dream, then that would also be of interest to me, but like I said, my main source of data on that is the academic literature.
My dissertation properly starts in September, but I still need to do adequate research beforehand, since creating a Q-sample is a time consuming process of refinement. I may also need to perform a pilot of the main experiment next month. The Q-sample also needs to be broadly representative of the issue at hand, so for this reason, I will only accept one dream report per person at the moment.

OK, many thanks, and I look forward to reading some dream reports.

Hi there!

Sad to see 200+ views and no replies to a person who asks for help. I would like to help if I can. And I also find the question quite relevant for any dreamer in general, because I think that the dream state is like a magnifying glass for feelings/emotions and they are at least as significant for mapping the subconscious as the sensory experience, which we talk about in so much detail.

So last night I had a nightmare (which is rare for me) and thus my resulting statement on how I subjectively felt is "frightened". You can read the DJ entry here, if you wish (it's number 4). I also incorporated the sound of my phone into that dream towards the end. In the dream it repeated a few times and I thought it was the warning sound of closing railroad barriers. I first recognized it as my phone after I woke up, I believe that is because the dream was very vivid and I was focused there so much due to the overwhelming fear of the nightmare.

If I were to get a huge sample of single statements about feelings, I would go to a more frequently visited part of the forum and ask the question directly in the thread title. I would also create a poll with many options to "My Statement". Maybe one or two words like "I need help for my dissertation" (or something in that manner), but then move on directly to the essence of the question. Being bold and direct is not unscientific if it leads to the desired data outcome. Just a suggestion, though, you are the scientist.

I hope this helps and that more people will contribute. Good luck!

Hi Nelzi, and thank you greatly for your contribution. I am sure that it will be helpful in generating some statements. I already have a broad one concerning negative emotions, but I suppose I could succinctly refine it a little with more specific ones, like yours about fear.
And thanks also for your suggestions; I will consider those. I'm not sure about a poll though, because this is a preliminary data gathering process for the main procedure, and a poll implies there are already some potential answers to the question to choose from. In Q-Methodology, the research and statements represent the researcher's 'best initial guess' as to how the question may possibly be answered in the main experiment. But since no Q-Sample can ever be complete, i.e. there's always the possibility someone may say something that wasn't anticipated, that's why the sample must be broadly representative.
Thanks once again, and here's hoping some more people will contribute too.

WellNowWhat:

I think you might have to rephrase your question as well, perhaps by making it a little less vague.

Are you talking about feelings generating by the dream, or feelings you felt upon waking? Are those feelings physical, emotional, intuitive, or all of the above? I think if you just ask how someone felt, then, with the exception of nightmares, the answer will likely be "I'm not sure," so people won't bother responding. ... By extension, I think that a lot of dream researchers seem to think that the mood of most dreams are negative, because those are the only ones they hear about.

For what its worth, my feelings in my last dream included happiness, satisfaction, concern, curiosity, and a few other emotional, tactile, and possibly physically-influenced feelings. Just like life, dreams can be very complex things, and to ask people to encase their entire experience in one feeling might be confusing.

I hope that made sense; good luck!

Pro tip: The Vocal Trance or Vocal Chillout channels at Digitially Imported.

What type of equipment do you have access to in the sleep lab? I wrote an app that plays audio tracks when REM sleep is detected from different sensors.

Addressing recent feedback:

(1): Sageous, thanks for your contribution. Just to clarify, I am after descriptions of how it felt for you during the dream, as that is when stimuli will be presented during the experiment. As you know, the potential for report alteration is huge upon awakening, due to reflection and retrospection. This is why good dream recall is important.
The question is meant to be open in order to obtain detailed and varied individual reports, so that the Q-sample is broadly representative of potential answers to that question. In the experiment, participants will have to sort statements (generated from the sample dream reports and experiences I am collecting here and from academic literature) onto a scale, ranking them against each other in terms of how relevant they are to their dream experience. There should be no shortage of potential answers for participants to sort when it is time for the experiment, as long as I get enough sample reports and statements.
And I fully appreciate that dreams can be unpredictably varied, but summarising the main theme of the experience should suffice.

(2): IAmCoder, that's very interesting to hear about your app, well done. I make do with a bedside CD player, and waking up in the early morning to put a suitable CD on repeat. Our sleep lab contains all that I should need to do my experiment, and the same CD player will probably be used for it. I haven't done much in there as of yet, so I can't describe facilities in detail.

Cool. Let us know how it goes and what facilities you have access to. I have documented the effects of audio tracks on REM sleep and have found that external auditory stimulus can be measured from EEG and eye movements. My contribution is that it felt like I just got home.

I have returned to University now, and I am in the process of refining my experimental procedure. That also means refining and finalising my Q-sort, which will happen predominantly through pilot studies I intend to carry out. Any more dream contributions are still welcomed.
Thanks.

Very interested in your work.

Context: I've forgone any "release" for 90 days now and the amount of sexual content in my dreams, lucid and otherwise is incredible. Excellent dream sign. Perhaps you'd consider future research in this area

--"I've traveled with the family to a dark hotel. Outside Washington DC where some relatives reside. It's a hotel of sin and debauchery & it's night time. But this is where I want to be right now. The family is gone & it's my time, I'm ready". The rooms are surely filled with willing women. Now I'm entering a dingy room with a woman I find myself with. Shorter, tattoo'd back, "been around" & says all the right things. She sits on the bed, I turn my back, look back at her and she's now saying "Just kidding" & has made off with my things. I am alone in the dark hotel room & time passes. I wake."--

The overriding feelings on waking were: Loneliness, arousal, cynicism.

Thanks for your contribution, bro, much appreciated.

An update.
Participant testing is under way, though going slower than I would have hoped. A big thanks to everyone who contributed dream experiences to this thread, that was very helpful in building my Q-sample. I was expecting a lot more contributions, but never mind.
For anyone who is interested, I can post my findings here when the time is right.

^^ Nice to know you're moving along, but it is too bad you didn't get many posts here. In retrospect (aka, 20/20 hindsight), perhaps we should have suggested that you start a new thread with the same OP but with a title that "pops" more on the forum, like "What does LD'ing feel like to you?" Probably too late do such a thing now, huh?

Regardless, good luck to you, and I hope the DV community comes through for you should you make another effort here...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Well now what?

I was expecting a lot more contributions, but never mind.


For anyone who is interested, I can post my findings here when the time is right.

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Please do. It doesn't always mean people aren't interested because they don't give a 'like' or respond by making an actual post.

Participant testing is currently under way, about half way through right now. Some have been more successful than others, but that is to be expected for dream research. But I am happy to report that the last two that were done this week went about as perfectly as they could have done. Here's hoping the next ones will follow suit. Regardless of the setbacks, I have got some very interesting experiences reported from my participants.

I believe to a certain extent it can... I know this from hearing certain music and it repeating in dreams... But I would very much like to see the results

TBH, I'm still a bit stumped by the question. I experience a range of emotions and sensations in almost all of the dreams I recall. I'm not sure how I would go about explaining them just like that, without relating them to whatever was going on in the dream.

Thanks for the continued support to those who have posted here. You may be happy to know that my testing and data analysis has been completed now, and I am in the middle of writing up the findings. I will post my results here in May when I am due to present the poster at the Student Conference.

Greetings to everyone. I am now posting my findings, having presented my work at the Conference this week.

Method
The external stimuli I decided to use were recordings of speech, one in English and the other in German. This represented two stimuli that differed in semantically meaningful content.
I had all of my participants first spend at least a few weeks trying to improve their dream recall abilities, an important and necessary step in any dream research. Luckily, everybody saw noticeable improvements, especially in the amount of detail they could remember from a dream.
The main experiment took place in our Sleep and Cognition Lab. My participants were given the opportunity to take a morning nap for 2 hours, while their sleep was monitored using polysomnography. When signs of REM sleep appeared, I played one of the stimulus sound files and then awoke the participant to obtain a verbal dream report. Using this technique, I was able to get a dream from a total of 9 of my participants; some had trouble sleeping in the lab, but this is a common issue in such research.

Findings
All dreams contained conversation or speech of some description, but unfortunately we cannot confirm if the stimuli were responsible for this, mostly because my participants could not remember the exact word they remembered hearing in the dream. Despite that, there were at least two dreams of interest to suggest direct incorporations of the stimulus.
One participant reported hearing a muffled voice as he was walking down corridors in his old school. He couldn't remember what it said, but his imitation of what it sounded like was very close to how the English stimulus sounded, so therefore I am confident in saying that that was the English stimulus making its way in the dream.
Another participant dreamed about relaxing and sunbathing on a beach with her family. She came to the conclusion that she must be on a foreign beach and all the other beach-goers were foreign based on the fact that they were all speaking a language that wasn't English. Sure enough, I was playing the German stimulus at that time.
Four participants dreamed about actually trying to get to sleep in the Sleep Lab itself, a common dream experience in a lot of lab studies (Schredl, 2008). I am interpreting this as evidence for the Continuity Hypothesis of dreaming, that we dream about what we do and think about in waking life. This is evident in these lab dreams by the fact that participants knew they were in a sleep lab and had to recall a dream for the experiment. Something I observed which has never been observed before (as far as I know) is that 2 participants in these lab dreams consciously anticipated the stimulus, even though they didn't know what it would be at this time in the experiment, and attributed events in the dream as being the stimulus. As an example, one participant reported waking up in the dream in a place that resembled a classroom, and there was a big board at the front playing adverts on a loop. She explicitly thought to herself that that was the external stimulus, therefore she knew the stimulus was going to happen at some point and continued to process this salient thought into the dream.

Similarity of dream experience was assessed using Q-Methodology. I extracted three factors from the data, conceptualising the range of experiences in the participant sample. 5 participants had dreams which were calm, consistent, and slightly emotional; 2 had dreams which were emotional, but normal and understandable; and 2 had dreams which were inconsistent, unrealistic and unstable. The most contrasting statement in the sample was "Things seemed stable and consistent in my dream", ranked most highly in Factor 1, the lowest in Factor 3, and was irrelevant in Factor 2.
Even though this configuration of factors does not clearly support my hypothesis that external stimuli can reliably induce similar dream experiences, the application of Q-Methodology was a success. I was able to extract naturally occurring categories of dreams based on their subjective experience directly from the data. What's more, my participants found using Q-sorts to report their dreams to be very helpful, allowing them to think much more deeply about their dreams and consider aspects of them that they may not have thought were that important compared to free recall. For these reasons, I highly encourage more dream researchers to make use of Q-Methodology.

That's it. I hope that this has been interesting and insightful to anyone who reads it.