The study performed in this article aimed to illustrate the relationship or connections between the individual differences of neurocognitive maturation and the formal and content related features of children’s dream reports. 40 children’s dream reports between the ages of 4 and 8 were analyzed. Specific dream content categories changed as the child developed and were correlated with cognitive performance. A modified version of the Fruit Stroop Test and Emotional Stroop Test for Children, and the Attention Network Test [ANT]) and subscales of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children [WISC–IV], and the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices [CPM] were used to measure the cognitive performance of the children.
Dreamer’s presence in their dreams is defined as “manifested in activities, interactions, self-effectiveness, willful effort, and cognitive reflections” for the purpose of the study taken place in the article. The dreamer’s presence in their dreams suggest a stronger control in every day life. There is also a correlation between the quality and substance of the events and interactions and the child’s emotional processing.
Dreaming in early childhood is still under discussion due to the fact there is no concrete proof of dreaming in association with REM under a certain age. However, REM sleep begins at an early stage in fetal development and has a significant effect on the neural maturation of a child. There is a large discussion on whether REM and dreaming begin in infancy or after a child is of 2 years of age, but there is existing research that supports the fact that dreams and dream plots in children develop alongside some of the cognitive, social, and intellectual abilities of children.
For this research study, four hypotheses were made based on direct and indirect evidence that suggests a relationship between the development of cognitive functions and dreaming. The first hypothesis was that dream recall frequency is expected to show a positive correlation with visuospatial skills and the length of dream records is hypothesized to correlate with the verbal abilities and memory capacity. The second hypothesis was that dream features that go through age-related development are expected to be directly positively associated with cognitive maturation (being measured by the performance of the Fruit Stroop Test and ANT, which are both neuropsychological tests that measure executive functions.)
Along with verbal actions that take place in dreams are expected to correlate with verbal abilities and the quality of the interactions, regardless of the type, should associate with the Emotional Stroop Measure. Hypothesis three states that bizarreness in dreams is expected to show a positive correlation with the development of all-purpose intelligence and executive functions. Hypothesis four states that the activity and agency of the self and conscious presence in dreams to be related to executive functioning, along with control of emotional interference, is expected.
The participants of the research study were 40 middle class children between the ages of 4 to 8.5 years old recruited from all over Budapest using convenience and snowball sampling. At least one parent had a degree and all children were healthy. Written consent forms were obtained from each parent.
Dreams were obtained from the children each morning in a structured interview format for a six-week period. Intelligence, executive functioning, and emotional maturation tests were taken place in a laboratory environment three times. Research participants had a fixed order of the tasks.
A correlational analysis of dream recall frequency was performed to allow a comparison of the results with previous studies. The Block Design Subtest was also performed. Both tests were done with and without age control. Report length did not show a relationship with the measures of verbal or memory performance. The number of human personas per dream were not correlated with the executive measures of any of the neuropsychological exams. There were no major associations between bizarreness in dreams and the measures of intelligence and executive functions. There were positive links between wakeful verbal abilities and verbal actions within dreams.
Overall, the research study has a good basis for reasoning for the purpose for the study and can be used to see how dreaming affects the development of children. However, I think testing four hypotheses at one time is too much. Having to analyze so much data can cause errors and lack of thoughtful analyzation. Researching too much allows for an error to occur or for insignificant looking, but important data, to be overlooked. I think more research participants should have been included, but with four hypotheses more than the 40 research participants would have been too much to analyze. I am a little bit skeptical as to the process of the dream retrieval. Creating a format for dream retrieval and making like a structured interview still allows room for input from the parents to alter or affect what the child would have said. The overall results were analyzed in way which made them able to be compared to other research studies, which I think is extremely important because it allows for potential outliers to be noticed.
