Dement & Klietman

Aim(s)

D&K’s study was focused upon 3 separate hypotheses:

• The first was that REM sleep would be extensively related with dream recall. (
This would be tested by participants by participants being woken in REM&
NREM sleep, at diff. frequencies, for example while one would be woken at
random, three others would be woken 3 times equally in REM & NREM
sleep.)
• The second would be that dream length and REM sleep time would be
associated. (This would be tested by the participant guessing how long they
had been in REM sleep, however this was found to be to difficult, and so the
researchers woke participants at 5 or 15 minutes into their REM and then
questioned the participants as to how long they thought they had been in REM
sleep, from the option of either 5 or 15 minutes.
• The final hypotheses would be that there would be and link between eye
movement, and the content of the dream. (Measured by an EOG machine,
which would measure whether the eye moved vertically, horizontally, or didn’t
move very much, and after which the participants were asked to describe their
dreams to test the hypotheses).

Sample

• 9 people, 7 Males and 2 females

• 5 of this sample were studied intensively, being woken 6-17 times during the
night, for many nights, and the other four studied only 1 or 2 nights at a time.
• THIS WAS A VERY SMALL SAMPLE!!!!!!

Method

• Lab experiment with independent measures for both the intensive& non-
intensive conditions, and repeated measures for conditions within the three
different hypotheses.
• Measurements were taken from an EEG (electroencephalogram) which
measured brain activity) and an EOG (electro-Oculogram) which measured
eye movement.

Procedure

• Was designed to ensure participants and researchers had minimum contact,

with the main contact only to clarify dream information, after the participant
had been wired up
• Participants were sent to the sleep lab just before their usual bedtime.
• Told to avoid alcohol and caffeine, as this could’ve affected their sleeping
patterns.
• .When the participants arrived at the lab, they were shown to a bedroom, were
 they were wired to two machines (EEG&EOG).
• They were told the aim of the research only involved REM sleep; however
they were woken in ~NREM sleep as well.
• They were told to speak into a tape recorder, stating what they dreamt, length
of the dream, and what the dream consisted of,
• Once the dream had been described, they were told to go back to sleep, which
usually took around 5 minutes.
• Altogether, participants were studied 351 times over 61 nights.

Results

• Hypothesis 1- those woken during NREM sleep were usually disorientated

with limited dream content, usually related to emotions& feelings. The dream
recalling NREM sleep was more commonly found when woken within 8
minutes of REM sleep.
• In REM sleep, 152 dreams were recalled, as oppose to 36 which were not
recalled, and in NREM, only 11 were recalled, with 149 being unable to recall
dreams.
• Hypothesis 2- When researchers compared data, they measured participants
precision in assuming their dream length and the amount of words used by
participants used in their dreams., both of which showed a positive correlation.
• Of those woken after 5 minutes 45 were correct with guessing their times,
with only 6 being wrong, and those woken after 15 minutes, 47 were correct,
and 13 were wrong.
• Hypothesis 3- Various participants were woken while in REM while their eyes
moved either vertically or horizontally.
• There reporting’s during vertical eye movement, recalled various things such
as climbing a ladder, or playing basketball.
• One person reported horizontal eye movement reported they were seeing
people throwing tomatoes at each other (weird hey??!?!?!?!?!?)
• 21 awakenings in both vertical& horizontal eye movement reported dreams
where they were observing something close to them
• 10 awakenings with very minimal eye movement recalled looking at objects in
the far distance.

Conclusions

• From hypothesis one, we can see that during REM there is a large increase in
brain activity, just as when we are awake, as 80% of participants recalled
dreaming through REM sleep.
• In hypothesis 2, we can see that we dream in real time, and all of our REM
sleep, is taken up through dreaming.
• Overall, our data tells us that REM sleep is quite a valid and reliable indicator
of dreaming, while the length of time spent dreaming is highly correlated to
time in REM.