Allyson Dale

Ontogenetic patterns in the dreams of women across the lifespan.

The present study supports and extends previous research on the developmental differences in womens dreams across the lifespan. The participants included 75 Canadian women in each of 5 age groups from adolescence to old age including 12-17, 18-24, 25-39, 40-64, and 65-85, totaling 375 women. One dream per participant was scored by two independent judges using the method of content analysis. Trend analysis was used to determine the ontogenetic pattern of the dream content categories. Results demonstrated significant ontogenetic decreases (linear trends) for female and familiar characters, activities, aggression, and friendliness. These patterns of dream imagery reflect the waking developmental patterns as proposed by social theories and recognized features of aging as postulated by the continuity hypothesis. Limitations and suggestions for future research including the examining of developmental patterns in the dreams of males are discussed.

Examining the Storytelling Method of Dream Interpretation with Canadian Soldiers

The current study extended previous research on the content of the dreams of Canadian soldiers to the discovery obtained from the dreams. Participants included 25 Canadian male soldiers with operational experience in Afghanistan as well as an age and gender matched control group of 25 Canadian male civilians. Each participant filled out The Storytelling Method worksheet, and discovery passages were coded following Hall and Van de Castle content analysis guidelines. Many significant relationships were found among discovery categories for soldiers. Categories of discovery from the dream were significantly different between soldiers and civilians and support the continuity hypothesis, as was found in previous research with dream imagery. As expected, soldiers had discovery relating to specific events from tours overseas as well as much more discovery about the past when compared to civilians. Years of service in the military was also correlated with relevant discovery categories for soldiers. Limitations as well as future directions for dream interpretation techniques with soldiers are discussed.

Dreams with Sexual Imagery: Gender Differences in Content between Canadians and Italians

This research extends previous investigations on dreams with sexual imagery while beginning the empirical investigation across cultures and between genders. To extend previous cultural research, sexual dream imagery and frequency between Italian and Canadian men and women were examined. The first study consisted of two samples of 267 dreams (112 male and 155 female) from Trent University, Canada and Tor Vergata University, Italy. The second study consisted of two samples of 100 dreams with sexual content (50 male and 50 female) from Canadian and Italian students. Computer textual analysis of dream content categories revealed that sexual imagery and frequency of sexual dream content was consistent with previous research. New findings were found between the two cultures and across gender. For dreams in general, differences were found between Italian males and Italian females, and, between Italian females and Canadian females. These studies show that both cultural and gender differences are relevant for dreams with sexual imagery. Further investigations are warranted and should be extended to other cultural groups now that the protocol has been established through these studies. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Dream content of Canadian males from adolescence to old age: An exploration of ontogenetic patterns

The present study was a first look at the ontogenetic pattern of dream content across the lifespan for men. The participants included 50 Canadian men in each of 5 age groups, from adolescence to old age including 12-17, 18-24, 25-39, 40-64, and 65-85. The last age group included 31 participants, totaling 231 males. One dream per participant was scored by two independent judges using content analysis. Trend analysis was used to determine the lifespan-developmental pattern of the dream content categories. Results demonstrated a predominance of aggressive dream imagery in the adolescent age group in line with social-developmental research. These patterns of dream imagery reflect the waking developmental patterns as proposed by social theories and recognized features of aging. Limitations and suggestions for future research, including the examining of the developmental pattern of gender differences across the lifespan, are discussed.

Autobiographical memory sources of threats in dreams

Temporal sources of dream threats were examined through the paradigm of the Threat Simulation Theory. Two groups of young adults (18-24 years old), who did not experience severe threatening events in the year preceding their dream and reported a dream either with or without threats, were included. Participants (N = 119) kept a log of daily activities and a dream diary, indicating whether dream components referred to past experiences. The occurrence of oneiric threats correlated with the reporting of threats in the daily logs, their average severity, and the stress level experienced the day preceding the dream. The group whose dreams contained threats had significantly more references to temporal categories beyond one year than the group with dreams without threats. Our findings suggest that in the absence of recent highly negative emotional experiences, the threat simulation system selects memory traces of threatening events experienced in the past.

Dreams of Canadian Students Norms, Gender Differences, and Comparison With American Norms

A total of 600 dream reports were collected from 300 Canadian university students, 150 female and 150 male, and their content analyzed with the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) system of categories. The main dream content categories were characters, aggressive and friendly interactions, positive and negative emotions, and dream outcomes. The main purpose of the analysis was to provide normative data for a large sample of young Canadians to determine (a) whether negative elements prevail over positive ones, as assumed by the threat simulation theory and (b) whether dream gender differences are consistent with differences in waking life, in accordance with the continuity hypothesis. Overall, findings support both theories. The final objective was to compare the Canadian data, relative to gender differences, with normative data established in 1966 with the original American sample. Findings for males and females and gender differences remain consistent with the American normative data for most categories despite a 50 years interval. Similarities in Canadian and American dream content reflect similarities between the respective cultures. They also attest to fundamental structural dimensions of dream content that transcend cultures. Other types of content analysis relative to themes, for instance, might be appropriate to highlight cultural differences.

Event-Related Potential Measures of Attention Capture in Adolescent Inpatients With Acute Suicidal Behavior

Impaired executive functions, modulated by the frontal lobes, have been suggested to be associated with suicidal behavior. The present study examines one of these executive functions, attentional control, maintaining attention to the task-at-hand. A group of inpatient adolescents with acute suicidal behavior and healthy controls were studied using a passively presented auditory optimal paradigm. This “optimal” paradigm consisted of a series of frequently presented homogenous pure tone “standards” and different “deviants,” constructed by changing one or more features of the standard. The optimal paradigm has been shown to be a more time-efficient replacement to the traditional oddball paradigm, which makes it suitable for use in clinical populations. The extent of processing of these “to-be-ignored” auditory stimuli was measured by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The P3a ERP component is thought to reflect processes associated with the capturing of attention. Rare and novel stimuli may result in an executive decision to switch attention away from the current cognitive task and toward a probe of the potentially more relevant “interrupting” auditory input. On the other hand, stimuli that are quite similar to the standard should not elicit P3a. The P3a has been shown to be larger in immature brains in early compared to later adolescence. An overall enhanced P3a was observed in the suicidal group. The P3a was larger in this group for both the environmental sound and white noise deviants, although only the environmental sound P3a attained significance. Other deviants representing only a small change from the standard did not elicit a P3a in healthy controls. They did elicit a small P3a in the suicidal group. These findings suggest a lowered threshold for the triggering of the involuntary switch of attention in these patients, which may play a role in their reported distractibility. The enhanced P3a is also suggestive of an immature frontal central executive and may provide a promising marker for early identification of some of the risk factors for some of the cognitive difficulties linked to suicidality.

Das Traumgenerierungsmodell von Ulrich Moser und Ilka von Zeppelin

ZusammenfassungMoser und von Zeppelin haben ein Modell der Traumgenerierung entwickelt. Anhand der daraus abgeleiteten empirisch-wissenschaftlichen Traumcodierungsmethode lassen sich Prozesse der Affektregulierung im Traum rekonstruieren. Dieser Ansatz wird anhand eines Traums eines kanadischen Soldaten veranschaulicht, wobei Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Methode beleuchtet werden. Abschließend wird diskutiert, inwieweit ein solches Vorgehen im didaktischen, institutionellen oder akademischen Kontext bei der Heranführung an das Phänomen Traum und als der Traumdeutung vorgelagerter Prozess hilfreich sein kann.AbstractMoser and von Zeppelin developed a dream generation model. Based on an empirical scientific method for dream coding derived from this model, affect regulation processes within dreams can be reconstructed. A dream of a Canadian soldier is used to illustrate this approach and to examine its possibilities as well as limitations. Finally, this article discusses how far such a procedure can be helpful in a didactical, institutional or academic context when approaching the dream phenomenon and as a process preceding dream interpretation.