Tag: most recent dreams

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A Dream Research Contest

To help test the initial hypotheses arising from the SDDb baselines, I am offering a dream research contest, open to anyone willing to give it a try.  The first person to send me (at bulkeleyk@gmail.com) the correct answers will win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

 

The contest challenges you to look at the word usage frequencies of six sets of dreams (available here) and make the following three predictions for each set: a) Is the dreamer a male or female? b)  Is the dreamer younger or older than 18? c) Is this a set of most recent dreams (MRDs) or highly memorable dreams (MemDs)?  You will not be able to read any of the dreams–you only get to look at the numerical frequencies of how often they used certain types of words.

 

I’m going to make it easier by giving three big clues.  These clues are so big, in fact, that they will give you a clear map to reach the correct answers.

 

Clue #1: The six sets of dreams come from four individual dreamers, let’s call them A, B, C, and D.  Two individuals gave two sets of dreams each.  The other two individuals gave one set of dreams each.  This means the contest has a bonus question: Which sets of dreams come from which individual?

 

Clue #2: As discussed in previous posts, the SDDb baselines have identified a number of significant differences between male and female dreamers and between MRDs and MemDs.   These differences can serve as analytic tools of comparison for making the kinds of predictions I’m asking you to propose.  Below are several specific tests you can use to identify the dreamer’s gender (male or female) and age (older or younger than 18) and the type of dreams contained in the set (MRDs or MemDs).  (Note: The age tests are not drawn directly from the SDDb but from other sources of research on children’s dreams (e.g., David Foulkes, Calvin Hall).)

 

Clue #3: There are two cases out of the 18 total predictions (3 questions x 6 sets of dreams) in which the overall conclusion of the tests gives the wrong answer.  In other words, the tests will lead you to the right answer about 89% of the time.  To get 100% of the answers right, you’ll have to add some kind of insight above and beyond the tests.

 

Good luck!  And please “show your work”–explain to me how you derived your predictions.

 

Tests for Gender:

If Emotion is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Emotion is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Fear is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Fear is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Speech is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Speech is Lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Characters is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Characters is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Family is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Family is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Friendliness is higher than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Friendliness is lower than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Physical Aggression is lower than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Physical Aggression is higher than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

If Sexuality is lower than the Female MRD baselines –> Female

If Sexuality is higher than the Male MRD baselines –> Male

 

Tests for Age:

If Cognition is higher than the MRD baselines –> Older than 18

If Animals is higher than the MRD baselines –> Younger than 18

If Family is higher than the MRD baselines –> Younger than 18

 

Tests for MRD vs. MemD

If Air is higher than the MemD baselines –> MemD

If Air is lower than the MRD baselines –> MRD

If Flying is higher than the MemD baselines –> MemD

If Flying is lower than the MRD baselines –> MRD

If Family is higher than the MemD baselines –> MemD

If Family is lower than the MRD baselines –> MRD

If Animals is higher than the MemD baselines –> MemD

If Animals is lower than the MRD baselines –> MRD

If Fantastic Beings is higher than the MemD baselines –> MemD

If Fantastic Beings is lower than the MRD baselines –> MRD

If Christianity is higher than the MemD baselines –> MemD

If Christianity is lower than the MRD baselines –> MRD

If Death is higher than the MemD baselines –> MemD

If Death is lower than the MRD baselines –> MRD

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SDDb Baselines for Recent Dreams and Memorable Dreams (Part 2 of Creating a Baseline for Studying Patterns in Dream Content)

“Dreams are not mysterious, supernatural, or esoteric phenomena.  They are not messages from the gods nor are they prophecies of the future.”  That’s what Calvin Hall said in his 1966 book The Meaning of Dreams (New York: McGraw-Hill, revised edition, p. 120).  Hall’s secular beliefs may or may not be justified, but what’s certain is that his baseline of “norm dreams” was designed to explain normal, average, ordinary types of dreams.  He was not interested in unusual, extraordinary types of dreams involving “esoteric phenomena.”  As a result, the baseline he developed gives what I call a homogenized view of dreams, privileging the theoretical significance of common, recently remembered dreams and denying the scientific relevance of rare but extremely memorable types of dreams from earlier times of life.

This is why I’ve created not one SDDb baseline, but two–one for most recent dreams (MRDs), and one for highly memorable dreams (MemDs).  You can find a spreadsheet with the baseline word usage frequencies here.  As always, I offer the caveat that this is a work in progress and will surely grow and change in the future.  My focus for now is to clarify some of the basic features of different types of dreams.  I’d like to know how MRDs and MemDs are similar, because that could tell us something interesting about how the sleeping mind operates consistently across varying dream types.  I’d also like to know how MRDs and MemDs are different, because that could tell us something interesting about the complexity of the mind in sleep and the creative potentials of the nocturnal imagination.  Setting up two baselines will, I hope, help the cause of answering these questions and provide a more sophisticated resource for the comparative analysis of other collections of dreams.

MRD Baseline: This includes 828 female dream reports and 691 male dream reports, all from the USA, all between 50 and 300 words in length, drawn from three sources.  The Hall and Van de Castle norm dreams (491 male, 490 female) form one component of the baseline.  This enables future analyses to maintain a solid “backwards compatibility” with the traditional standard of measurement in the dream research field, even as we continue trying to expand and improve beyond it. The additional dreams come from two SDDb sources: The Demographic Survey 2010, which included a “most recent dream” question, and the SCU Sleep/Wake Study 2008, which asked each participant to keep a dream journal and provide their two most recent dreams.  The SCU participants were college students like the HVDC norm dreams participants.  Those in the Demographic Survey were considerably older; I don’t yet have a detailed analysis of the age data, but I’m pretty sure the majority of participants were 50+ years of age.

MemD Baseline: This includes 801 female reports and 504 male reports, all from the USA, all between 50 and 300 words in length, drawn from four SDDb sources.  One is a question asking participants in the Demographic Survey 2010 to describe the earliest dream from childhood they can still remember.  Second is a question asking those same participants to describe the worst nightmare they can recall from any time in their life.  Third is a survey of children ages 8-18 asking them to describe the most memorable dream they’ve ever had.  Fourth is a survey of adults asking them to describe the most memorable dream they’ve ever had.  Unlike the MRD baseline, this one includes reports from children and reports answering different types of questions.  I have grouped these sources into a single baseline because they all fit comfortably under the heading “highly memorable dreams.”  Two of the sources use exactly that phrase in their questions, and the other two asked questions implicitly seeking reports of dreams with unusual memorability.  The inclusion of children’s reports is justified, I believe, because so many highly memorable dreams come from childhood, and thus children themselves may be in an especially good position to recall these dreams and describe them in detail.

At the far right of the spreadsheet you can see the word usage frequencies for each of these constituent sources of the two baselines.  As I said in the previous post, two important principles for creating a useful baseline are transparency and flexibility.  The baselines I’ve created have their limits, but they offer a great deal of transparency–you can see exactly where the reports are coming from–and flexibility–you can change or revise the baselines to suit your own purposes.

In the next post of this series, I’ll talk about some of the initial patterns I see in comparing the MRD and MemD baselines.  I invite your thoughts and observations! And corrections where I’ve gotten something wrong…