FREE ESSAY ON BIZARRE ELEMENTS OF DREAMS

BIZARRE ELEMENTS OF DREAMS

BIZARRE ELEMENTS IN DREAMS, DAYDREAMS
AND WAKING NARRATIVES
Imogen Nightingale
ABSTRACT
In this Experiment, eighty-eight subjects were asked to individually recall and
transcribe dreams and daydreams over a one-week period. It was also requested that they
note anything prominent that had happened to them over that week. Results worksheets were
the filled out and data was handed in for analysis. The hypothesis was to test Hobson &
McCartley's activation-synthesis hypothesis that dreams would have more bizarreness than
other waking narratives, Our results, however, failed to support this, instead showing a
higher significance of bizarreness when daydreaming, and supporting the findings of
Reinsel, Antrobus & Wollman. Scene shifts and transformations were also a focus of our
study, results were in accordance with our hypothesis, however did not achieve
statistical significance.GET BROOK TO LOOK AT THIS!
A dream may be defined as a mental experience, occurring in sleep, which is characterised
by hallucinoid imagery, predominantly visual and often vivid (Hobson & McCarley, 1977).
J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley argue that dreams are simply the by-product of bursts
of activity amaniting from subcortial areas in the brain (Hobson, 1988; Hobson &
McCarley, 1977; McCarley, 1994, cited in W. Weiten, 1998).
One explanation of bizarreness and disruptive discontinuities found in dream reports is
provided by the activation-synthesis hypothesis (McCarthy & Hoffman, 1981 sited in
Rittenhouse et al). This model (as seen below in Table 1) proposes that dream bizarreness
is a psychological correlate of REM state physiology. The most important tenet of the
activation-synthesis hypothesis is that during dreaming the activation brain generates
its own information by a pontine brain stem neuronal mechanism (Hobson et al, 1977). This
produces wide awake brain waves during REM sleep, creating what is known as a dream.
Table 1. Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis Explained
The ASH was challenged by Reinsel, Antrobus, & Wollman (1992)...further claimed that
while REM sleep dreams are bizarre, they are no more so than reports of either NREM sleep
mentation or waking fantasy. EXTEND
Williams, Merritt, Rittenhouse, & Hobson supported the activation-synthesis hypothesis
reporting that dreams are quantitatively different from waking fantasies (1992). They
postulated that dream bizarreness is the direct cognitive correlate of aminergic
demodulation of cortical networks in REM sleep. Their results indicate that dreams
contain more bizarreness as well as other dreamy features than daydreams and waking
fantasy (Williams et al, 1992). Dreams were found to be significantly more bizarre in
incongruity and discontinuity, as well as uncertainty.
Williams et al. concluded that due to the difference in neuronal activity of the brain
between the two states, dreaming and fantasies are two totally different modes of
information processing (1992). This is due to the difference in neuronal activity of the
brain between the two states (Mamelak & Hobson, cited in Williams et al., 1992).
Specifically, the brain is unable to adequately organise or record events in a dream
(Williams et al., 1992). Mamelak & Hobson found that this would clearly contribute
towards changes in thought or scene shifts during a dream (1989).
Transformation in dreams and other narratives is considered in this study. Rittenhouse,
Stickgold and Hobson, claimed that a dream object does not transform randomly into
another object, but into an object that shares formal associative qualities with the
first (1994).
The purpose of this study is to assess the prediction based on the activation-synthesis
hypothesis that there will be greater bizarreness in dreams than in daydreams or waking
narratives. This has been supported by the work of Hobson, but challenged by others such
as Reinsel, Antrobus, and Wollman. It was also planned to investigate the occurrence of
transformations of persons or objects, following the work of Rittenhouse, Stickgold and
Hobson.
The variables being measured in this study are 'scene shift' (discontinuity of setting in
place or time), 'entity change' (discontinuity of character, object or action), and
'discontinuity' (of thoughts or feelings of the dreamer or dream character). Followed by
'incongruity' (a mismatching of features of characters, objects, actions, thoughts or
emotions with what is normal in waking life), and finally 'cognitive uncertainty (of
thoughts, emotion or feelings or vagueness surrounding any element of the dream or
narrative. 
METHOD
Participants
The participants were University of Tasmania KHA2112/312 students. There were 88 cases
available to be samples, however 8 of these cases have been excluded from the analysis by
listwise exclusions of cases that have any missing values. There were 80 cases in the
final sample.
Procedure
Each participant was requested to recall dreams and daydreams over a period of a week.
There were three separate entities to be recalled. The first was to recall a dream which
was had overnight whilst sleeping (REM). The second was to recall a daydream that takes
place whilst sitting in the University Library. The third was to recall a daydream which
takes place whilst lying on their bed in their bedroom. Each participant was then asked
to briefly note occurrences that had taken place the week prior. The information then had
to be scored and handed in for analysis. Please refer to Appendices A and B for
applicable scoring sheets and recording method.
RESULTS
The data were analysed using a repeated measured analysis of variance with four levels
corresponding to the four conditions in which the narratives were collected. A
Greenhouse-Geisser correction was made to the p value to allow for violation of the
sphericity assumption. Adjacent tests were then carried out in descending order to show
significance.
The results failed to support the activation-synthesis hypothesis with only category
showing the highest number of dream bizarreness per sentence. Incongruity was the only
category to support Hobson & McCarley's (1977) findings with 'dream' having the greatest
number of bizarre elements (0.217). 'Home daydream' (0.146), 'library daydream' (0.100)
and lastly 'diary note' (0.008) followed this. However, when adjacent tests were carried
out 'library daydream' and 'diary note' held highest significance with a value of p*0.05.
'Dreams' and 'home daydreams' approached significance. When the binomial 2-tailed test
was performed it did not reach significance at the p*0.05 level. However it almost
reached significance at p*0.07.
Overall, 'dreams' with a total mean of 0.571 (SE=0.041) only had a significantly higher
number of total bizarreness per sentence than 'library daydreams' with a mean of 0.537
(SE=0.059) followed by 'diary notes' with a mean of 0.143 (SE=0.027). However, 'home
daydream' showed the highest total bizarreness with an overall mean of 0.768 (SE=0.186).
Total bizarreness had a value of F(3,216) 8.34 which had a very high significance of
p*0.01.
Dreams had both the highest number of words per sentence with a mean of 218 (SE=10.54)
and the most vivid imagery with a mean of 7.78 (SE=0.17). All categories exhibited some
form of statistical significance, however none have fully supported the ASH. All category
results may be cited in Table 2.
Table 2. Bizarre Incidents per Sentence, Wordcounts and Vividness of Imagery in Dreams
(d), Library Daydreams (l), Home Daydreams (h), and Diary Notes (n) from 80
participants.
Dream Library
Day-dream Home
Day-dream Diary
Note 
F(3,216) Different
Pairs of
Means 1
Scene shift 
M 0.113 0.218 0.302 0.106 4.69 * ld
SE 0.015 0.032 0.079 0.024 
Entity change 
M 0.078 0.050 0.136 0.001 3.87 * ln
SE 0.010 0.013 0.057 0.001 
Other discontinuity 
M 0.064 0.084 0.069 0.012 3.63 * dn
SE 0.008 0.022 0.025 0.005 
Incongruity 
M 0.217 0.100 0.146 0.008 12.21 ** ln
SE 0.026 0.031 0.049 0.004 
Cognitive uncertainty 
M 0.099 0.084 0.114 0.016 4.62 * ln
SE 0.015 0.020 0.039 0.006 
Total bizarreness 
M 0.571 0.537 0.768 0.143 8.34 ** ln
SE 0.041 0.059 0.186 0.027 
Number of words 
M 218 84 81 132 106.5** dn, nl
SE 10.54 3.64 3.66 6.48 
Vividness of imagery 
M 7.78 5.51 6.02 6.72 29.82 ** dn, nh, hl
SE 0.17 0.26 0.25 0.24 
* p * .05, ** p * .01
Ten entity transformations were made available: eight in dreams and two in library
daydreams as shown in Tables 3 and 4. Although eight of the ten transformations occur in
dreams the difference does not achieve statistical significance at the p*0.05 level,
possibly because of the small numbers (p =0 .11, 2-tailed binomial test). A total of only
12.5% of participants reported any transformations.
Table 3. Transformations in Dreams from 8 Participants.
Original Entity Transformed Entity
flatmate mother
two friends & stranger father & boyfriend
twin sister mother
friend Tom Julius
father dog
blond hair long brown hair & eyes to brown
pet cat mastiff dog
two fish two frogs
Table 4. Transformations in Library Daydreams from 2 Participants.
Original Entity Transformed Entity
man and woman with blonde hair ken and barbie (barbie dolls)
students face disolving only her skull is left
DISCUSSION
This study failed to support Hobson and McCarley's (1977) activation-synthesis hypothesis
that there would be greater bizarreness in dreams than in daydreams or waking narratives.
Our results were supported by Reinsel, Antrobus & Wollman when Klinger (1971) stated that
the potential for waking fantasy to be equally as bizarre as dreaming . Reinsel et al
further claimed that while REM sleep dreams are bizarre, they are no more so than reports
of either NREM sleep mentation or waking fantasy (Reinsel et al., cited in Williams et
al., 1992).
Our results differed from both Hobson et al and Williams et al, whose results confirmed
the activation-synthesis hypothesis that there would be greater bizarreness in dreams
than in daydreams or waking narratives. This certainly was not the case in our study as
daydreams showed to have far greater prominence. Williams et al., when comparing dream
reports with waking fantasies, showed that discontinuity is the most state specific class
of bizarreness, being 6 times more frequent in dreams than in fantasies (1992). Our
results failed to support his finding, with incongruity leading as the most state
specific class of bizarreness.
At the class level, bizarre transformations of objects and characters appear to be
controlled by associational constraints that require the transformed item to normally
remain within the same class after the transformation. He also found that no
transformations of inanimate objects into characters or vice versa were observed
(Rittenhouse, Stickgold & Hobson, 1994). Our findings support this study, however our
sample indicated that only 12.5% of participants recalled transformations in their
reports. This sample is too small to show an accurately high significance.
Our inability to confirm our hypothesis may have been due to such methodological errors
as 80 participants was not a large enough sample to gain accuracy. It is recognised that
reports may have been edited in order to prevent embarrassment, however this is not
regarded as likely to confound our analysis. Another problem with using home-based
reports is the lack of controlled conditions. Each subject experienced different settings
and report techniques. More importantly we cannot ensure that participants recorded their
experiences immediately after they occurred, this might have resulted in state dependent
amnesia.
In summary, this study failed to support Hobsons activation-synthesis hypothesis that
there would be greater bizarreness in dreams than in daydreams or waking narratives. The
main psychological finding is that, contrary to the activation-synthesis hypothesis;
dreams did not have more bizarre features per sentence than daydreams. The one category
in which dreams exhibited greater bizarreness was the category for incongruities.
Transformation, did support Rittenhouse et al. findings. Had the methodological problems
been overcome, the results of our study may have shown results in accordance with the
activation-synthesis hypothesis. 
Bibliography
REFERENCES
Hobson, J.A., & McCarley, R.W. (1977). The brain as a dream state generator: An
activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process. The American Journal of Phychiatry,
134, 1335-1348.
Reinsel, R., Antrous, J., & Wollman, (1992), Bizarreness in dreams and waking fantasies.
In J.A. Antrobus, & M. Bertini (Eds.), The Neuropsychology of sleep and dreaming (pp.
157-183). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Rittenhouse, C., Stickgold, R., & Hobson, J. A. (1994). Constraint on the transformation
of characters, objects, and seting in dream reports. Consciousness and Cognition, 3,
100-113.
Weiten, W. (1998). Psychology: Themes and Variations. (pp.643-649).
United States of America: Brooks/Cole
Williams, J., Merritt, J., Rittenhouse, C., & Hobson, J.A. (1992). Bizarreness in dreams
and waking fantaies: Implicatins for the activation-snthesis hypothesis. Consciousness
and Cognition, 1, 172