Immediate and delayed incorporations of events into dreams: further replication and implications for dream function

Abstract

SUMMAR Y The incorporation of memories into dreams is characterized by two types of temporal effects: the day-residue effect, involving immediate incorporations of events from the preceding day, and the dream-lag effect, involving incorporations delayed by about a week. This study was designed to replicate these two effects while controlling several prior methodological problems and to provide preliminary information about potential functions of delayed event incorporations. Introductory Psychology students were asked to recall dreams at home for 1 week. Subsequently, they were instructed to select a single dream and to retrieve past events related to it that arose from one of seven randomly determined days prior to the dream (days 1-7). They then rated both their confidence in recall of events and the extent of correspondence between events and dreams. Judges evaluated qualities of the reported events using scales derived from theories about the function of delayed incorporations. Average ratings of correspondences between dreams and events were high for predream days 1 and 2, low for days 3 and 4 and high again for days 5-7, but only for participants who rated their confidence in recall of events as high and only for females. Delayed incorporations were more likely than immediate incorporations to refer to events characterized by interpersonal interactions, spatial locations, resolved problems and positive emotions. The findings are consistent with the possibility that processes with circaseptan (about 7 days) morphology underlie dream incorporation and that these processes subserve the functions of socio-emotional adaptation and memory consolidation.k e y w o r d s circaseptan process, dream incorporation, dreaming, gender, memory, temporal factors

Persisting Myths Surrounding Sigmund Freud's Dream Theory: A Reply to Hobson's Critique of the Scientific Status of Psychoanalysis

“…Furthermore, it is worth noting that in instances when daytime sources dated farther back in time to a current dream, in most cases, the memories of those events were refreshed on the day before the dreams occurred (e.g., there was talk about something that had happened some time ago). This result is consistent with the data on the high incorporation of immediate previousday events (about 65% of dreams) found in adult dreams (Epstein, 1985;Nielsen & Powell, 1992; see also Nielsen, Kuiken, Alain, Stenstrom, & Powell, 2004). This contrasts with Hobson's assertion that "When an experiental source of dream content could be identified at all (and often none could be found), the peak occurrence was six days before dream, Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 14:09 03 October 2015 not the day of the dream" (Hobson, 2013, p. 146), data for which there is no source cited.…”

Dreaming and personality: Wake-dream continuity, thought suppression, and the Big Five Inventory

“…This is in keeping with both the day residue (Freud, 1900;Nielsen & Powell, 1992;Powell, Nielsen, Cheung, & Cervenka, 1995), and dream lag (Blagrove et al, 2011a(Blagrove et al, , 2011bNielsen, Kuiken, Alain, Stenstrom, & Powell, 2004) effects. Analyses in the present study illustrated the predominance of waking-life interpersonal relationships being represented in dreams, and to a lesser extent but still common waking-life concerns about work or studying, but financial worries in dreams were relatively rare.…”

Dream emotionality. Selected formal properties of dreams

“…The characteristic distribution of the results for the last week before the occurrence of the dream is consistent with the results of numerous studies (e.g., Nielsen & Powell, 1992;Marquardt et al, 1996;Nielsen et al, 2004). Such results can be linked to a common mistake that results from referring to an external week scale, a mistake that people frequently make when they try to arrange the time of previous events (Stawiska, 2000;after: Maruszewski 2011).…”