One hundred typical themes in most recent dreams, diary dreams, and dreams spontaneously recollected from last night.

Abstract

The aim of this study is twofold: (a) to replicate the previous survey finding that a majority of dreams spontaneously recollected from a randomly designated day following sleep contain at least 1 typical theme listed on the Dream Motif Scale, and (b) to examine typical themes experienced by Chinese people in their most recent dreams and diary dreams. In addition to the replication survey, in which 670 Chinese participants completed the Dream Motif Scale, 252 most recent dreams and 228 diary dreams were collected from 286 Chinese participants. The previous finding was precisely replicated to the effect that 87.5% of participants who were able to recall their dreams in the night before the completion of the Dream Motif Scale identified at least 1 typical theme in their recollected dreams. To obtain more reliable results, all dream reports collected for content analysis were coded by 3 independent judges using 2 lists of typical dream themes: Dream Motif Scale and Typical Content Analysis Grid. Approximately 60% of dream reports showed at least 1 typical theme, irrespective of which coding system and which type of dream reports were used for analysis. The comparison of the incidence rates suggests that the content analytical method might underestimate the prevalence of typical dream themes measured by the questionnaire method. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)