Analysis of factor structure in a dream inventory

Intercorrelations of responses to the KJP dream inventory, initially a checklist of dream elements, were factor analyzed from a database from 65 graduate majors in psychology. Six factors were identified within the checklist: repetitive traumatic dreaming, reoccurring pleasantness, openness or depth, discontentedness, dissociative avoidance, and uninhibitedness. Scoring criteria were developed for each subscale.     

Mindfulness and dream quality: the inverse relationship between mindfulness and negative dream affect

The aim of the study was to examine the relationship of mindfulness to the emotional quality of dreaming. In our questionnaire-based study, comprising the data of 587 undergraduate students we examined the association between trait anxiety, perceived stress, trait mindfulness, negative dream affect and dream anxiety. Our results indicate that mindfulness is inversely related to disturbed dreaming and predicts less severe dream disturbances after controlling for trait anxiety. Moreover, the results of the applied hierarchical regression analysis suggest that mindfulness is associated with reduced dream anxiety by moderating the extent of waking anxiety. Our findings extend previous research relating mindfulness, emotional regulation and sleep quality to the domain of dream research. We suggest that mindfulness is a possible protective factor against dream disturbances.     

Maternal behaviors and cognitions during discipline episodes: a comparison of power bouts and single acts of noncompliance

Maternal behaviors and cognitions within power bouts and single acts of noncompliance were compared by using 2 methodologies. Ninety mothers completed daily telephone interviews concerning their children's misbehavior for 12 days. Half of the mothers also completed a computerized simulation of 3 different power bouts, and the other half of the mothers completed a similar simulation of 3 sets of single noncompliance episodes. Mothers made behavioral intention choices and rated their perceptions of the child's behavior in the computer simulation. Results indicate that power bouts formed a special class of discipline episodes distinct from single noncompliance. Mothers reported more negative perceptions of the child as well as more aversion during extended power bouts. Discussion focuses on possible different types of power bouts and the need for theories of socialization to include the transactive nature of discipline episodes.     

Social episodes and social structure in an academic setting: The social environment of an intact group

The social environment of an intact academic group, composed of faculty members, research students, and staff, was studied using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. The perceived group structure and the perception of social episodes were represented, and the relationship between these two aspects of the social environment was analyzed. Results indicated that (a) the perceived group structure could be adequately represented in three dimensions with group members differentiated along dimensions of sociability, creativity, and competence, (b) an individuals' perception of the group and his position within it were significantly related, (c) group members perceived the social episodes of the group in terms of attribute dimensions such as anxiety, involvement, evaluation, and socioemotional vs task orientation, and (d) an individual's formal status and perceived position within the group were significantly related to his perception of the group's episodes. The results are discussed in terms of the factors influencing episode perception, and the symbolic processes mediating between social position and perception. The utility of social episodes in describing a social environment is considered.     

Behavior analysis and education: An unfulfilled dream

This paper presents the author's view of why the promise for education visualized by early behavioral researchers is as yet unrealized. It points out that behavior analysis has had an important impact on special education but has had much less influence on teaching practice in regular classrooms. This is not seen as the fault of educators who have failed to embrace procedures developed by behavior analysts. Rather, the author contends, behavior analysts have failed to develop procedures that fit the ecology of the regular classroom. Those developed often require too much additional effort thereby punishing those who attempt their use. Another factor hindering widespread adoption is that behavior analysts have failed to disseminate their procedures and have not participated widely in undergraduate training of teachers. The paper concludes by noting that our success in special education provides a model for behavior analysts interested in regular education. By developing procedures that result in increased academic performance for entire classrooms without punishing the teachers who implement them, by making those procedures available commercially and by publishing in journals teachers read, and finally by participating more widely in undergraduate training, the unfulfilled dream of what behavior analysis has to offer education can be achieved.     

Syntactic structure and artificial grammar learning: the learnability of embedded hierarchical structures

Embedded hierarchical structures, such as "the rat the cat ate was brown", constitute a core generative property of a natural language theory. Several recent studies have reported learning of hierarchical embeddings in artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks, and described the functional specificity of Broca's area for processing such structures. In two experiments, we investigated whether alternative strategies can explain the learning success in these studies. We trained participants on hierarchical sequences, and found no evidence for the learning of hierarchical embeddings in test situations identical to those from other studies in the literature. Instead, participants appeared to solve the task by exploiting surface distinctions between legal and illegal sequences, and applying strategies such as counting or repetition detection. We suggest alternative interpretations for the observed activation of Broca's area, in terms of the application of calculation rules or of a differential role of working memory. We claim that the learnability of hierarchical embeddings in AGL tasks remains to be demonstrated.     

Last night I had the strangest dream: Varieties of rational thought processes in dream reports

From the neurophysiological perspective, thinking in dreaming and the quality of dream thought have been considered hallucinatory, bizarre, illogical, improbable, or even impossible. This empirical phenomenological research concentrates on testing whether dream thought can be defined as rational in the sense of an intervening mental process between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, leading to a conclusion or to taking action. From 10 individual dream journals of male participants aged 22–59 years and female participants aged 25–49 years, we delimited four dreams per journal and randomly selected five thought units from each dream for scoring. The units provided a base for testing a hypothesis that the thought processes of dream construction are rational. The results support the hypothesis and demonstrate that eight fundamental rational thought processes can be applied to the dreaming process.     

On doing research: the dream and the reality

The principal concern of this essay is to offer practical and personal guidance to professional therapists who wish to engage in research in family therapy. It is not a paper about research design or experimental/observational/survey methods; rather the focus is upon the experience of engaging in research. It attempts to destroy a few common myths about researchers, research, and the motives of researchers and those whom they research. Research is seen as a continuing and evolving process (rather than a product) which can intrude in many aspects of the individual's life; it can affect motives, working relationships, organizational composure, personal family life, and personal self-esteem. Research is thus like most other forms of employment. Research, as an activity, must be seen in terms of systems dynamics, resistance to change, and hopefully, in terms also, of self-actualization and the refreshment of professional parts that other addictions cannot reach.
Recommendations are made for the structuring of research activity, in the light of the research model presented.     

Encountering the dream: Intersecting anthropological and psychoanalytical approaches

The human dream has been a central and contested therapeutic resource for the various schools of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. However, anthropology has been less concerned with human dreaming, though many anthropologists have studied indigenous peoples' dream theories as a consequence of the importance that such people gave to their dreaming. During the twentieth century there has been a fertile interaction between psychoanalytical approaches to dreaming and pertinent anthropological studies. This paper situates these interconnected disciplinary approaches to dreaming in the context of the historical development of thinking about culture and dreaming. The dream is considered as a multiple human resource. Discussion focuses on a fourfold approach to the dream: as therapeutic and existential encounter; as potential social knowledge; as cultural template; and finally as reflexive opportunity. Overall, the paper asserts the centrality of the dream as both a cultural and therapeutic resource.     

Spoken and written dream communication: differences and methodological aspects

Based on structural differences between spoken and written language, the purpose of this paper was to investigate whether spoken and written communication imply a different representation in reporting an experienced dream. In fact, the clausal-dynamic quality of the former and nominal-synoptic quality of the latter, with the consequent differences in length, cohesion and density, could enhance/reduce the perceptual character and narrative structure of report features often considered in order to assess sleep mentation. In particular, we wondered whether, after eliminating all the elements responsible for the more conspicuous quantitative differences across the two forms (false starts, repetitions, digressions, redundancies), we would obtain two equivalent ways of reporting dreams. Three hundred and two (101 males and 201 females) subjects, raging in age from 18 to 40 years, participated as volunteers in the study and were asked to complete a dream diary daily for 14 days, by tape-recording their own dreams and putting them down in writing. The reports were analyzed by a psycholinguistic system. Results indicated that the report modality is able to affect the dream experience representation, conditioning the figurative (re)translation carried out by the tester: written forms show a loss of hallucinatory information and a non-complete correspondence also of the bizarreness features with respect to the spoken texts. Partialling out for length eliminated any difference between spoken and written dream reports on bizarreness; on the other hand, controlling the sequence effect of the report did not introduce changes. Methodological and theoretical implications were discussed.     

Real and ideal self-images in second- and fifth-grade children: Reliability,validity and factorial structure

The reliability, construct validity, and factorial structure of three self-image instruments were assesses in a total of 80 second- and fifth-grade children. Both real self-images (children's current views of themselves) and ideal self-images (the self views to which children aspire) were assessed. the split-half and test—retest reliabilities of the instruments were adequate even for children's as young as second graders. Stronger evidence of construct validity was found for the older children, although the intercorrelation patterns for both age groups were characterized by larger correlations between assessments of real and ideal self-images using the same instrument than between assessments of the same component of the self-image across the three instruments. Contrary to predictions gener ated by developmental theory, the factor analyses provided non evidence of increasing differentiation of the self-image with age. They did, however, reveal that second and fifth graders distinguish distinctly different functional domains within their self-images.