AUTHOR=Wang Jiaxi , Song Bin , Feng Xiaoling , Shen Heyong , Liu Ruoqiao 

TITLE=Presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of them

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1042857

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1042857

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Dreaming is the subjective experience during sleep. A spontaneous thought is a thought that comes to one’s mind involuntarily. This study investigated whether presleep focusing on a positive spontaneous thought enhanced the possibility of dreaming of the thought. Ninety-seven participants were quasi-randomly assigned to an expression condition (focus on an spontaneous thought for 5-min before sleeping; N = 45) and a control condition (think about anything for 5-min before sleeping; N = 45). Participants completed a dream diary upon waking. Then both participants themselves (the self-rating method) and external judges (the external-rating method) rated the correlation between the positive spontaneous thought and the dream. The result of the external-rating method indicated that presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of the thoughts. In addition, the external-rating method found that presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of thoughts that were related to the positive spontaneous thoughts but not the positive spontaneous thoughts themselves. These results supported the current concern theory which suggests that one’s current concerns increases responses to cues related to the concerns implicitly. In addition, these results supported the continuity hypothesis which states that dreaming is in continuous with waking life, and thus the intensity of a daily concern may be related to the possibility of dreaming of the daily concern.