Biological 3: Dement & Kleitman

Question 0

What was the aim?

Answer 0

To see if REM sleep was related to PPs experience of dreaming by observing the length, frequency and patterns of REM sleep.

Question 1

What was the background?

Answer 1

• range of explanations of dreams e.g Freud’s “road to the unconscious”
• sleep cycle= happens 5-7 times a night, goes from level 1 to 4 (deep sleep) and then extends to 2 whereby there are 10-15 mins of REM sleep

Question 2

What were the 3 hypotheses?

Answer 2

H1= significant association between REM and dreaming

H2= positive correlation between estimate of time spent dreaming+measurement of REM SLEEP

H3= relationship between pattern of eye movement+reported content of dream

Question 3

What were the controls?

Answer 3

• all PPs tested individually used EEG
• PPs told to eat normally but avoid caffeine and alcohol
• PPs slept in dark, quiet lab
• doorbell used to wake PPs
• tape recorder by bed used to record dreams
• PPs woken 351 times over 61 nights, average 5.7 times a night

Question 4

How was H1 measured?

Answer 4

• various times during the night (some during REM some not) woken by doorbell
• PPs immediately asked to write whether they’d dreamt or not
• not told whether in REM or not

Question 5

How was H2 measured?

Answer 5

• woken up either 5 or 15 mins into REM

* asked to estimate whether they’d been dreaming for 5 or 15 mins

Question 6

How was H3 measured?

Answer 6

Woken after 4 patterns of eye movement once lasted 1 min

1. Mainly vertical
2. Mainly horizontal
3. Both
4. Very little or none

Asked to describe dream

Question 7

What were the results of H1?

Answer 7

REM:
Recall= 152
None= 39

NON-REM
Recall= 11
None= 149

REM sleep predominately associated with dreaming
NREM awoke within 8 mins= remembering from previous

Question 8

What were the results of H2?

Answer 8

After 5 mins:
Right= 45
Wrong= 6

After 15 mins:

Right= 47
Wrong= 13

Able to estimate accurately apart from PP DM who could only remember latter part of dream

Question 9

What were the results of H3?

Answer 9

VERTICAL:
•cliff, hoisting machinery
•climbing ladder
•throwing balls at net

MIXTURE:
•Always looking at objects/people close to them

NONE:
•watching something from distance/staring fixedly at object

Question 10

What are some evaluations?

Answer 10

PROS:
•highly controlled extraneous variable= no use of stimulants, location and sleeping time
•PPs recalled dreams= removed researcher bias when asking about dream

CONS:
•lack of Eco v= PPs had to sleep in a lab which could have affected sleep
•nature of waking up PPs may have affected recalling of dream
•small sample size= low reliability as easily distorted by individual differences

Question 11

What are some possible improvements?

Answer 11

• test PPs in conditions of their own home= increase Eco v
• wider variety of PPs= more women, younger/older, children etc
• test other methods of waking e.g baby crying, birds, traffic