Patterns of dreaming recall: An EEG study.

11 recallers and 11 nonrecallers of dreams were compared with respect to several characteristics of their rapid eye movement (REM) periods during sleep. Continuous recordings of REMs and EEGs were obtained for 2 consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep for each S. The records were scored to yield measures of total dream time (TDT) and rate of eye movements during REM periods. Recallers had significantly higher TDT than nonrecallers. However, contrary to prediction, nonrecallers had a significantly higher rate of REMs during dreaming than recallers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Finger electromyographic activity during sleep: Its relation to dreaming in deaf and normal subjects.

Observations carried out during the sleep of 13 deaf Ss showed that: (a) the rates of dream recall from rapid eye movement (REM) periods were similar to those for normal hearing Ss; (b) finger electromyographic (EMG) bursts outside of REM periods were not related to the recall of mental activity; (c) in both deaf and hearing Ss, REM periods showed a consistently accelerated rate of finger EMG activity in comparison with other stages of sleep; (d) contrary to expectations, rates of finger EMG activity for 10 normal hearing Ss were just as high as those of the deaf group. The implications of this finding for the motor theory of thinking were discussed. (18 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dream reports from different stages of sleep.

8 Ss (paid volunteer males, ages 17-27) were placed in the information-gathering sleep situation for 57 (nonconsecutive) nights. Ss were awakened during various stages of sleep (determined by EEG and eye movement activity), and the content of their dream or thoughts at the time of the awakening explored. Mental activity (dreaming, thinking) was reported at all levels of sleep. Reports during periods of rapid eye movement (REM) revealed more statements involving affective, visual, and muscular content with less correspondence to residue of S's waking life, than in non-REM periods. Results are related to Freudian theory of dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rorschach movement and dreams: A validation study using drug-induced dream-deprivation.

To test the hypotheses that dream deprivation would produce an increase in quantity of projected movement and a change in its quality in the direction of body-dissolution imagery, 20 Ss were tested with Holtzman inkblots before and after 2 nights of drug-induced dream deprivation. Their performance was compared with that of 30 non-dream-deprived controls. Results were significant in the predicted direction and were interpreted as offering support for Rorschach's views on the fundamental similarity between movement and dreams due to the centrality of kinesthetic experience in both. Additional findings on space were congruent with Fonda's view of space as resistance to internal, rather than external, forces. More specifically, space was interpreted as resistance to movement. (32 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements in reading: Perceptual and cognitive processes.

This article discusses the variability of eye movement behavior. The variability exists between readers, so that the average fixation duration for sonic readers my be around 200 ms and for other readers it may be closer to 300 ms; the average saccade length for some readers may be 6 letter spaces, while for others it may be closer lo 10 letter spaces; and some readers rarely regress while others regress quite frequently. These eye movement characteristics can also be influenced by text difficulty; more difficult text leads to longer fixation durations, shorter saccades, and more regressions. More important than the between reader variability is the within reader variability that exists with each of these measures. The article also discusses research on eye movement during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The recall of dreams: Its relation to repression and cognitive control.

"The present study investigated the relationship between the recall of dreams and the cognitive controls continuum of leveling-sharpening… . The results confirmed the hypothesis that subjects who recall many dreams, i.e., who do not rely primarily upon repression, would show the sharpening tendency… a relationship between low dream recall and the leveling tendency, was not supported… [suggesting] that the psychoanalytic concept of repression can be associated with the theory of cognitive controls." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of beliefs about the origins and controllability of dreams.

In three studies the authors investigated the development of beliefs about dreaming. Study 1 assessed 3 to 5-year-old children's beliefs about the origins and controllability of dreams. Results revealed significant changes in children's beliefs about the roles of behavioral experiences and mental processes in the generation of dream content. Results also revealed that young children consider both dreams and imagination to be highly controllable. In Study 2, preschool-age children, elementary school-age children, and adults received either imagination or dream stories and were questioned about controllability. In Study 3, emotional valence of the dream content was varied. Results of Studies 2 and 3 revealed significant development in beliefs that dreams are not subject to conscious control. Beliefs in controllability were higher among females. Study 3 showed that the emotional content of a dream affects these claims. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferred goals in narratives: Evidence from self-paced reading, recall, and eye movements.

Three convergent methodologies were used to investigate the generation and reinstatement of goals not explicitly stated in a text. Readers read paragraphs adapted from J. S. Huitema, S. Dopkins, C. M. Klin, and J. L. Myers's (1993) study, which conveyed a character's goal early in the text. The goal was either stated explicitly or implied. An event was described later in the text that was either consistent or inconsistent with the goal. Line-by-line reading data, recall for the narratives, and eye-movement data were collected. Evidence is presented that readers infer a character's goal online at the time the information is presented, and the inferred goal functions like an explicitly stated goal in online comprehension processes and in the resulting memory representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working with dreams using the Hill cognitive-experimental model: A comparison of computer-assisted, therapist empathy, and therapist empathy + input conditions.

Ninety-four undergraduates participated in a computer-assisted, therapist empathy, or therapist empathy + input dream session. Although all conditions were rated positively, both therapist conditions were rated higher than the computer condition, and action ideas were better for the therapist empathy condition than for the other 2 conditions at postsession. At follow-up, the therapist empathy + input was rated higher than the empathy condition, which was higher than the computer condition. Participants in all conditions liked gaining awareness/insight, associations, and the approach to working with dreams; participants in both therapist conditions liked their therapist; participants in the empathy condition liked waking life links. Therapist condition participants mentioned fewer disliked things but complained more about research procedures; computer participants complained about the computer program and not working with a person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements and the use of parafoveal word length information in reading.

Eye movements were monitored in 4 experiments that explored the role of parafoveal word length in reading. The experiments employed a type of compound word where the deletion of a letter results in 2 short words (e.g., backhand, back and). The boundary technique (K. Rayner, 1975) was employed to manipulate word length information in the parafovea. Accuracy of the parafoveal word length preview significantly affected landing positions and fixation durations. This disruption was larger for 2-word targets, but the results demonstrated that this interaction was not due to the morphological status of the target words. Manipulation of sentence context also demonstrated that parafoveal word length information can be used in combination with sentence context to narrow down lexical candidates. The 4 experiments converge in demonstrating that an important role of parafoveal word length information is to direct the eyes to the center of the parafoveal word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): A meta-analysis.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a controversial treatment suggested for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other conditions, was evaluated in a meta-analysis of 34 studies that examined EMDR with a variety of populations and measures. Process and outcome measures were examined separately, and EMDR showed an effect on both when compared with no treatment and with therapies not using exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli and in pre–post EMDR comparisons. However, no significant effect was found when EMDR was compared with other exposure techniques. No incremental effect of eye movements was noted when EMDR was compared with the same procedure without them. R. J. DeRubeis and P. Crits-Christoph (1998) noted that EMDR is a potentially effective treatment for noncombat PTSD, but studies that examined such patient groups did not give clear support to this. In sum, EMDR appears to be no more effective than other exposure techniques, and evidence suggests that the eye movements integral to the treatment, and to its name, are unnecessary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements and the perceptual span in older and younger readers.

The size of the perceptual span (or the span of effective vision) in older readers was examined with the moving window paradigm (G. W. McConkie & K. Rayner, 1975). Two experiments demonstrated that older readers have a smaller and more symmetric span than that of younger readers. These 2 characteristics (smaller and more symmetric span) of older readers may be a consequence of their less efficient processing of nonfoveal information, which results in a riskier reading strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements and word skipping during reading: Effects of word length and predictability.

Eye movements were monitored as subjects read sentences containing high- or low-predictable target words. The extent to which target words were predictable from prior context was varied: Half of the target words were predictable, and the other half were unpredictable. In addition, the length of the target word varied: The target words were short (4–6 letters), medium (7–9 letters), or long (10–12 letters). Length and predictability both yielded strong effects on the probability of skipping the target words and on the amount of time readers fixated the target words (when they were not skipped). However, there was no interaction in any of the measures examined for either skipping or fixation time. The results demonstrate that word predictability (due to contextual constraint) and word length have strong and independent influences on word skipping and fixation durations. Furthermore, because the long words extended beyond the word identification span, the data indicate that skipping can occur on the basis of partial information in relation to word identity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement control during reading: Effects of word frequency and orthographic familiarity.

Word frequency and orthographic familiarity were independently manipulated as readers' eye movements were recorded. Word frequency influenced fixation durations and the probability of word skipping when orthographic familiarity was controlled. These results indicate that lexical processing of words can influence saccade programming (as shown by fixation durations and which words are fixated). Orthographic familiarity, but not word frequency, influenced the duration of prior fixations. These results provide evidence for orthographic, but not lexical, parafoveal-on-foveal effects. Overall, the findings have a crucial implication for models of eye movement control in reading: There must be sufficient time for lexical factors to influence saccade programming before saccade metrics and timing are finalized. The conclusions are critical for the fundamental architecture of models of eye movement control in reading- namely, how to reconcile long saccade programming times and complex linguistic influences on saccades during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements of young and older adults during reading.

The eye movements of young and older adults were tracked as they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. In Experiment 1, cleft object and object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than cleft subject and subject relative clause sentences; however, older adults made many more regressions, resulting in increased regression path fixation times and total fixation times, than young adults while processing cleft object and object relative clause sentences. In Experiment 2, older adults experienced more difficulty than young adults while reading cleft and relative clause sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities created by deleting the that complementizers. Regression analyses indicated that readers with smaller working memories need more regressions and longer fixation times to process cleft object and object relative clause sentences. These results suggest that age-associated declines in working memory do affect syntactic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements and lexical ambiguity resolution: Investigating the subordinate-bias effect.

Recent debates on lexical ambiguity resolution have centered on the subordinate-bias effect, in which reading time is longer on a biased ambiguous word in a subordinate-biasing context than on a control word. The nature of the control word--namely, whether it matched the frequency of the ambiguous word's overall word form or its contextually instantiated word meaning (a higher or lower frequency word, respectively)--was examined. In addition, contexts that were singularly supportive of the ambiguous word's subordinate meaning were used. Eye movements were recorded as participants read contextually biasing passages that contained an ambiguous word target or a word-form or word-meaning control. A comparison of fixation times on the 2 control words revealed a significant effect of word frequency. Fixation times on the ambiguous word generally fell between those on the 2 controls and were significantly different than both. Results are discussed in relation to the reordered access model, in which both meaning frequency and prior context affect access procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements when reading transposed text: The importance of word-beginning letters.

Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences with words containing transposed adjacent letters. Transpositions were either external (e.g., problme, rpoblem) or internal (e.g., porblem, probelm) and at either the beginning (e.g., rpoblem, porblem) or end (e.g., problme, probelm) of words. The results showed disruption for words with transposed letters compared to the normal baseline condition, and the greatest disruption was observed for word-initial transpositions. In Experiment 1, transpositions within low frequency words led to longer reading times than when letters were transposed within high frequency words. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the position of word-initial letters is most critical even when parafoveal preview of words to the right of fixation is unavailable. The findings have important implications for the roles of different letter positions in word recognition and the effects of parafoveal preview on word recognition processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward the experimental control of dreaming: A review of the literature.

Reviews those scattered studies which attempt to control & empirically evaluate nocturnal dreaming. It may be possible to develop a functional experimental approach in which dreams become more immediate and observable aspects of behavior, rather than only memories. (96 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bilateral eye movements enhance the retrieval of episodic memories.

Two experiments examining effects of eye movements on episodic memory retrieval are reported. Thirty seconds of horizontal saccadic eye movements (but not smooth pursuit or vertical eye movements) preceding testing resulted in selective enhancement of episodic memory retrieval for laboratory (Experiment 1) and everyday (Experiment 2) events. Eye movements had no effects on implicit memory. Eye movements were also associated with more conservative response biases relative to a no eye movement condition. Episodic memory improvement induced by bilateral eye movements is hypothesized to reflect enhanced interhemispheric interaction, which is associated with superior episodic memory (S. D. Christman & R. E. Propper. 2001). Implications for neuropsychological mechanisms underlying eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (F. Shapiro, 1989, 2001), a therapeutic technique for posttraumatic stress disorder, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)