A researcher studied 24 adults in a sleep laboratory. Each participant was awakened during REM sleep and immediately wrote a report of their dream. Eight hours later, without seeing the first report, each participant wrote another account of the same dream.
Three judges, who did not know when each report had been written, assessed all the reports. The judges showed good agreement. Bizarreness density was calculated by dividing the number of bizarre items by the number of sentence units.
Table 1: Mean results for dream reports collected at the two times
| Time when report was collected | Mean bizarreness density (bizarre items per sentence unit) | Reports judged to contain a clear, continuous storyline (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Immediately after waking | 0.32 | 38 |
| Eight hours after waking | 0.18 | 67 |
Use the data in Table 1 and your knowledge and understanding from across the psychology course to explain how far you agree with the researcher's conclusion:
“A dream journal completed several hours after waking provides strong evidence that synthesis occurred in the cerebral cortex during REM sleep.”
In your answer you should refer to Activation Synthesis Theory and memory.
81 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Psychology 6.2 Theories/Explanations: The Nature of Dreaming, covering 6.2.1 Freudian dreaming: unconscious and repression, 6.2.2 Freudian dreaming: wish fulfilment and dream content; criticisms, 6.2.3 Freudian Theory research study: Freud (1918), 6.2.4 Activation Synthesis: REM sleep and the brain, 6.2.5 Activation Synthesis: pons, cortex and synthesis; criticisms, and 6.2.6 Activation Synthesis research study: Williams et al. (1992). Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.