Physiological-Dement And Kleitman's Sleep And Dreaming

Question 0

What were the three approaches towards this aim?

Answer 0

1. Dream recall differs between REM (Rapid eye movement) sleep and nREM sleep
2. There is a positive correlation between subjective estimates of dream duration and the length of the REM period
3. Eye-Movement patterns are related to dream content

Question 1

What was the aim of the sleep study?

Answer 1

To see if there was a relationship between eye movements in the sleep and the dreamers recall

Question 2

The method for each of these were as follows:

Answer 2

1-A Participants were woken either in REM or nREM, but were not told which stage of sleep they had been woken to. They confirmed whether they’d had a dream and the content of it
2-B Participants were woken following either 5 or 15 minutes in REM sleep. They were asked how long they thought they had been dreaming for, 5 or 15 minutes
3-C The eye movements of the participants were detected using electrodes placed around the eyes. The participants were then woken after showing a specific type of eye movement and asked what they were dreaming.

Question 3

Who were the participants that were used?

Answer 3

Nine adults were used in this (7 male and 2 females) They were also not allowed to induce caffeine or alcohol before the experiment and for the actual procedure, they also had electrodes attached to them during sleep, which could have affected their sleeping patterns in ways

Question 4

What was the independent variable?

Answer 4

For example the types of movements of eyes, whether they dreamed, or the content of the dream

Question 5

What was the dependent variable?

Answer 5

One for example was that the participants did not drink alcohol or caffeine before the experiment

Question 6

What were the findings of the experiments?

Answer 6

• Participants were more likely to report dreams later in the night than earlier
• Rapid eye movements were never observed in the initial minutes of sleep
• REM sleep uninterrupted lasted 3-50 minutes,normally 20 minutes
• REM stages are longer later at night
• Rapid Eye movements consisted of 2-100 movements at 0.1-0.2 per second
• Woken patients from REM sleep generally didn’t dream again until the next REM phase

Question 7

The main correlations found were?

Answer 7

Dreams were much more common in REM sleep than nREM
Participants could accurately estimate whether they had been dreaming for 5 or 15 minutes and the number of words in their dream narratives correlated with the length of time they had spent in REM sleep
Eye movement patterns were related to dream content

Question 8

What conclusions were therefore found?

Answer 8

• People dream in REM but not nREM sleep
• People can judge the duration of their dream accurately
• Eye movements in dreams relate to dream content