Dream lucidity positively correlates with reality monitoring.
Consciousness and cognition – October 01, 2022
Source: PubMed
Summary
High dream lucidity is associated with enhanced reality monitoring, helping individuals distinguish between real and imagined experiences. In a study involving 31 college students, a positive correlation was found between dream lucidity and reality monitoring capabilities. Expanding this, 109 participants rated their dream lucidity alongside memory characteristics of perceived versus imagined events. Results showed that those with greater dream lucidity exhibited fewer differences in sensory details, indicating a superior ability to navigate reality and fantasy, reducing susceptibility to memory errors.
Abstract
Dream lucidity, the awareness of consciousness in dreams, is linked to functions that support reality monitoring in differentiating between internally and externally generated memories. However, lucid dreams have been argued to result from thin reality-fantasy boundaries that lead to reality monitoring errors. To examine the relationship between dream lucidity and reality monitoring, we recruited 31 college students to rate their dream lucidity for 7 days and then complete a reality monitoring test in Experiment 1, observing a positive correlation between dream lucidity and reality monitoring. In Experiment 2, 109 participants rated dream lucidity and the memory characteristics of perceived and imagined events. Dream lucidity was negatively correlated with differences in sensory details between the memories of perceived and imagined events. The findings indicate that individuals with high dream lucidity have a superior ability to discriminate between externally and internally generated events that are susceptible to reality monitoring errors.