DREAMS AND AGE

DREAMS AND AGING

Marco Zanasi, Simone De Persis, Manlio Caporali, Alberto Siracusano

Unità Operativa di Psichiatria - Università Tor Vergata Roma

Corresponding author: Marco Zanasi, Via Giuseppe Tomassetti, 7 – 00161, Rome, Italy

Email: [email protected]

This paper is not currently under consideration elsewhere

The rather limited data existing on the influence age has on reports of dreams appears to show

that the aging process is associated with a reduced ability to remember and recount dreams.

Zepelin (1973) reported an age–related decrease in dream recall, especially after 50 years of age.

Giambra, (1974, 1977-78; 1979-80) reported decreases in dreams frequency in the elderly for

both men and women, although the women recall more dreams than men (Giambra, Jung,

Grodsky, 1996). Herman and Shows (1983-84) found, based upon retrospective reports, that the

number of days with dreams decreased with age.

These findings can be in part related to the small reduction of REM sleep with increased age

(Miles & Dement, 1980). Reduced dream recall in the elderly could be also a result of memory

decrements associated with senescence or of a failure of initial memory consolidation (Giambra

& Arenberg, 1993).

Other researchers have interpreted these findings as the sign of a diminished interest in dreams,

and not as a consequence of a weakening of the memory (Strunz, 1993). More recent studies

suggest that the ability to recall dreams is an acquired cognitive skill that depends in part on the

development of the neural network responsible for spatial perception in the parietal lobes and

that children's clearer memory of dreams is linked to their visuospatial capacities (Foulkes, 1982,

1983, 1993, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Solms, 2000; Domhoff, 2001).

The data are less clear concerning dream content, but seem show a change in emotional themes,

for example, with elderly subjects’ dreams characterised by a higher incidence of nightmares

mailto:[email protected]

(Salvio, Wood, Schwartz, Eichling, 1992) and, also, a reduction in emotion (aggression,

friendship and activity) (Waterman, 1991). Other studies report greater kindness in the dream

content and emotional content showing greater contentment and less anger, shame, disgust and

contempt (Howe & Blick, 1983; Blick& Howe, 1984).

There is evidence of a small age-related decline in dream distortion (bizarreness) and family-

related content, and slight age-related decline of aggression in dreams. (Zepelin, 1980-81, 1981).

Relatively little is known about the various sensory experiences in dream reports that occur

without known external stimuli and their modifications with aging (Calkins, 1893; Weed &

Hallam, 1893; Hacker, 1911; Bentley, 1913; Kohler, 1913; Knapp, 1956; Snyder, 1970;

McCarley & Hobson, 1979; Zadra, Nielsen, Donderi, 1998).

The above data derive mainly from the analysis of dream content and report frequency. Instead,

the present study investigated age-related modifications in dream activity using an original

approach based on the textual analysis. Such an approach may help clarify which aspects of

dream activity change with aging, and in particular if variations in dream recall are associated

with modifications in the semantic structure of the text of the dreams.

METHODS

Participants were 148 elderly people all over the age of 70 (M age=75.879 ys., SD=8.42) in good

health and 151 control participants between the ages of 18 and 25 (M age=22.45 ys., SD=3.23).

The elderly subjects were recruited from Old Peoples' Clubs and Universities for Senior Citizens

during lectures (these are institutions providing recreational and study facilities for people over

65 in Italy). The control participants were students from the "Tor Vergata" University, Rome.

The research team gave out general information about the aim of our research and people

showing interest in the experiment were contacted a week later. All subjects were asked to

recount the last dream they could remember and this was tape-recorded and transcribed as an

accurate working copy. All participants were asked to sign an informed consent form approved

by the Ethical Committee of the "Tor Vergata" University, Rome.

In order to analyse the dreams according to the Jungian vision (which looks at the dream

as a text produced by the dreamer's unconscious while he sleeps; Jung, 1945) we used

processing techniques deriving from textual analysis (Gigliozzi, 1997). If we consider the dream

as a text, that is, as a well-knit whole, then a fortiori we may consider the dream verbally as a

particular form of text which transforms the oneiric experience into an objective product. The

dream, while it is being dreamed, is experience, not text. Memory of that experience, whether

reported or not, is the text of the dream. The dream becomes a text the moment the initial

experience of it has ended, just as a waking experience can become a text as soon as we are able

to reflect on it as "something that happened" to us (Kilroe, 2000). The fundamental elements of

a narrative have been proposed by Chatman (1978). He divides narrative into two fundamental

parts: the story and the discourse. The story is the content or chain of events (i.e., the actions and

occurrences) and excludes those elements that could be described as contextual variables (i.e.

the characters and setting). The discourse is the form of expression or the means by which the

content is communicated. In simple terms, the story represents what is described in a narrative

and the discourse is concerned with how (Chatman, 1978). In this work we studied the discourse

of the dream. There are numerous studies supporting the belief that reported dreams are a

faithful representation of the dream itself. Jung seems to presuppose the adequacy of the dream

report as a valid object of textual inquiry, (Jung, ibidem).. Numerous studies that have analysed

the contents of dreams show that oneiric content is, in general, analogous to waking thoughts

(Kramer et al., 1975). Experiments in which stimuli administered during sleep were shown to

have been incorporated into the dreams confirm the existence of a relationship between the

oneiric experience and the reported dream. (Kramer et al. 1983). Other experimental research

has confirmed that there is a significant similarity between oneiric experience and the reported

dream (Roffwarg et al., 1962; Taub et al,1978). More recently Kramer (1993) hypothesizes that

verbal accounts accurately represent the original oneiric event. Proceeding from this starting

point, we used some of the textual analysis techniques developed in relation to the analysis of

literary texts for an analysis of our material (Gigliozzi, 1997). In particular, the oneiric text was

evaluated along the general lines as follows:

1. The composition of the text and its definition of character

2. The report’s temporal organisation, i.e., the tenses used in the dream report. The

narrator of a story or episode can choose between two alternatives: he can either state the

facts by following the order in which they occurred within a referential (or pseudo-

referential) universe or manipulate the narrative's temporal sequences.

3. The emotional organisation: the narrative text does not set out a story in an

objective and linear fashion but is, in some way, organised by the sender to fit the

receiver. The sender programs the moments and ways in which the data can be received

and the story is reconstructed by the receiver, as well as the receiver’s emotional

responses. To this end, the sender can choose how to represent the story and make use of

certain artifices: the use of anacronia, particular ways of using quantitative elucidation,

coup de théàtre, narrative paralipsis (passing to one side) and ellipsis (the omission of

information) and the attribution of an emotional charge to determinate syntagmas1. The

sum total of such artifices constitutes the speech's emotional aspect or seiemic (excited)

narrative level. An analysis of the speech's seiemic level can be understood in two

different ways: in the broad sense, as the global analysis of the text's formal organisation

seen from a seiemic perspective or, in the narrower sense, as the analysis of the speech's

emotional unities or seiems.

4. The semantic fields. Semantic fields are groups of words (nouns, verbs,

adjectives or adverbs) that are used to describe a particular situation, environment or body

of objects constituting a part of our everyday life and creating precise associations in our

minds. A semantic field is the area of meaning that a body of words regarding a given

subject has.

In particular, the above categories of analysis are represented by the following measured

parameters (Table I):

Composition of text (Place and Context)

1. The presence or absence of an observation that defined the place in which the oneiric

scene took place and, in the case of such a presence, the further specification of the type

of space defined (open or enclosed).

(b) The definition of the narrative's context or of what could be defined the setting for the

oneiric narrative, paying particular attention (in the case of a well-characterised context) to

the descriptive or emotional quality of such a definition.

Temporal Organization (Chronology, Narrative Sequence and Verb Tenses)

1 syntagma - a syntactic string of words that forms a part of some larger syntactic unit

The presence or absence of chronological observations contributing to a setting of the scene in

which the action takes place.

2. (d) Linearity or lack of it in the narrative sequence (eg. the presence or absence of

flashbacks or of tearing in the narrative texts's continuity and consistency etc). (e)

Uniformity or lack of it in the narrative's verb tenses and, where they are uniform, the

temporal allocation of the action (present or past).

Emotional Organization (Speech, Characters, Situation and Emotivity)

(f) The narrative speech's structure or the prevalence of direct or indirect speech or of

descriptions given from a position outside the narrative sequence. (g) The cast of

characters or definition of the dreamer's position as well as that of other possible actors

in the oneiric scene. (h) Clarification or lack of it regarding the dreamer's emotional state

(fear, anger, anguish etc). (i) A definition of the situation represented as fantastical or

realistic.

The number of words used to compose the narrative was, moreover, counted for every dream.

Semantic Fields

Semantic fields were evaluated by assessing all the lemmas2 relating to the senses (sight,

hearing, smell and taste) and measuring the frequency of their occurrence in the dreams

of the two groups examined. We studied these particular semantic fields to investigate the

modification (if it occured) of the various sensory modes in dreams with aging. A study

of semantic fields faces the problem of polysemy [the ambiguity of an individual word or

phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings]. The

computer is only able to supply a list of the frequency with which the lemmas potentially

linked to the semantic field arise in the text. It is not able to assess ambiguity linked to

2 the set of different forms of a word, such as the inflected forms of a verb. Ex. 'sing', 'sang', 'sung' are one lemma,

'boy', 'boys' another.

polysemy and the fact that words often have multiple meanings depending on the context.

For example, in Italian (which was the language spoken by the study's subjects), the term

"Sentire" and its related lemmas can refer to the auditory semantic field ("sento una voce"

- "I can hear a voice"), the olfactory one ( "Sento un odore" - "I can smell something"),

the emotional one ("mi sento male" - "I'm not feeling too good"), etc. If this problem is to

be overcome, it is necessary to have recourse to a process of clarification by human

examiner. Studies carried out by Fortier and Keen (1999, The reliability of human

disambiguation in text markup. ACH- ALLC Conference. KJ Keen PA. Fortier Available

at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/ach-allc.99/schedule.html) confirm that the use of human

examiners for studying semantic fields or literary themes is a justifiable enterprise from

the statistical perspective. To this end, the various lemmas were assessed separately by

two examiners using the Key Word In Context (KWIC) version of the software Textual

Analysis Computing Tools (TACT3), an interactive full-text retrieval system with a

number of analytical tools. Like others of its kind, TACT retrieves segments of text

according to specified word forms. In addition, it can find words or character-strings that

match criteria the user specifies. It was used initially only in the field of literary criticism,

as for an objective method of studying the works of different authors without being

bound by the personal approach of individual researchers. The application of this

software to a text allows identification of single individual words and also the meaning of

the word in particular contexts via the statistical processing of meaningful correlations

between different key words. With TACT it has been possible to obtain the list of KWIC

concordances which is made up of lists of symbol-words or key-words (i.e., the most

meaningful words amongst those which appear most frequently) inserted in their original

context. The methodology described above permits the underlining of the hierarchical

3 Key Word In Context: the drawing up of the concordances i.e. of the word index inserted in the context in which the

word was located

position that symbol-words occupy in dream material by reference to their absolute and

relative frequency of occurrence.

Analyses

The frequency distributions for the dream's descriptive variables were analysed and studied both

individually and by correlations. A two-dimensional Contingency table was created for every

pair of variables and the absolute frequencies for each line/column intersection were entered.

The two-dimensional distributions were processed using the test in order to evaluate the

characteristic distributions.

The length of the dreams' texts (both for elderly subjects and control subjects) was compared

under the various sub-headings created by the descriptive variables. The comparison test was

conducted by analysing the variance from a chosen classification criterion (the ANOVA test).

The T-Test was used to analyse the difference between the number of words in the elderly

subjects' dreams and that in the young peoples' dreams.

Contingency tables provided the dependence degree existing between the different couples of

variables considered. The chosen statistical analysis lead to the mean Cramer index of

contingency. Tables of Contingency with a p>0.05 were excluded. The number of words, both

for elderly subjects and control subjects, was compared under the various subheadings created by

the above parameters. The comparison test was conducted by analysing the variance from a

chosen classification criterion (the ANOVA test).

RESULTS

A modest difference in the total number of words used to recount dreams was found, (t= 1.86, p

= .067), consistent with findings reported by Watermann (1991). Statistics revealed the

following significant differences between the two groups in the measured parameters: enclosed

space, open space, place absent, context descriptive, context emotional, context absent,

narrative linear, narrative broken, action time present, action time absent, situation

fantastic, situation realistic, character/alone, character/actors, speech direct, speech

indirect, speech alternates, verb tens/present, verb tens/alternating, emotivity explicit

statement (Table 2).

Another significant result regards the semantic fields. A significant prevalence in the statements

was made by the younger group regarding sight, (Table 3).

Among the main results of the statistical analysis we mention the relevant difference between the

two groups for the value of the Cramer indexes (Table 4). The index distribution is nearly always

complementary: high values were found in the elderly, whereas in the controls the values were low,

and viceversa. The conclusion we draw is that the two samples dream in a different manner and,

therefore, aging causes evident changes in the oneiric production and dream report.

DISCUSSION

The first result to emerge from a summary analysis of the results, and one which is worth

emphasizing, is the presence of significant associations between the descriptive textual

parameters examined in terms of their mutual relationships. This appears to support the theory of

a narrative principle at work in the process of forming the dream which would organise it as "a

perceived sequence of events that are connected in a non-casual manner" (Toolan's definition of

narrative, 1988). In other words, a careful analysis focusing on the dream text's connecting

constituents indicates that it is structured in the form of a narrative.

The results relative to the single measures are not of easy interpretation and need further

study. Regarding the emotivity, the differences in expressed emotivity across the two age groups

seem to support past results showing a reduction in emotions in elderly subjects' dreams

(Waterman, 1991). This finding can be related to the fact that, as many studies show, in the

elderly there is a reduction in emotions and a greater control of the emotions (Malatesta &

Kalnok, 1984; Diener, Sandvik, Larsen 1985; Barrick, Hutchinson, Deckers 1989; Stacey &

Gatz, 1991; Lawton, Kleban, Rajagopal, Dean 1992; McConatha, Leona, Armstrong 1997;

Deptula, Singh, Pomara 1993; Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr, Nesselroade 2000; Birditt &

Fingerman, 2003; Charles, Reynold, Gatz 2001). It is important to consider that these findings

can be explained by cohort effects. The cohort effects show higher positive affect among older

adults than among younger adults (Gross, Carstensen, Pasupathi, Tsai, Skorpen, Hsu, 1997;

Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998 ).

Another finding of great interest concerns the difference between the Control and the

elderly participants in relation to the semantic field Sight. This, in our opinion, signals a decline

in visual sensory experiences experienced during dreams and reported in the elderly participant’s

dream account.

This finding is less easily interpreted. A possible explanation could be tied to a selective

senescence in the neural networks involved in the dream's genesis and those linked to the

visuospatial memory, in particular. Studies using PET (positron emission tomography) show that

different neural networks are recruited when different kinds of information need to be stored in

working memory. The studies show that different networks are used for visuospatial information

and verbal information (Baddeley, 1996; Jonides, Schumacher, Smith, Lauber, Awh, Minoshima,

Koeppe 1997; Smith & Jonides, 1998). Verbal working memory is lateralized in the left

hemisphere; it involves frontal regions and posterior parietal regions. In contrast, spatial working

memory is relatively bilateral, but with a right-hemisphere dominance; it again involves frontal

and parietal areas. (Smith & Jonides, 1997, 1999). Working memory undergoes a modification as

age advances, in the sense that the older adults show a global pattern of anterior bilateral

activation for both types of memory. After the age of 70 the verbal working memory is more

bilateral and visual memory show a complete bilateralization in frontal regions for (Smith,

Jonides, Koeppe, Marhuetz 1998; Reuter-Lorenz, Jonides, Smith, Hartley, Millera, Marshuetza,

Koeppe 2000; Morcom, Good, Frackowiak, Rugg 2003).

These data would seem to demonstrate that aging leads to less reliance on "specialised" areas and

more recruitment of homologous areas in the other hemisphere to compensate for neural decline.

This datum therefore seems to suggest that visuospatial memory becomes increasingly

"vulnerable" with advancing age. It is known that in many situations, visual input tends to

dominate the other sensory modes of expressing memory and perception (Colavita, 1974;

Rollins, Schurman, Evans, Knoph 1975; Arenberg, 1976; Podros, Wyke, Waters 1981; Colley &

Fossey, 1986; Reeve, Mackey, Fober 1986; Penney, 1989; Berkinblit, Fookson, Smetanin,

Adamovich, Poizner 1995; Barry, Bloomberg, Huebner 1997) and in the fastest responses visual

dominance appears to be related to the relatively weak capacity of visual inputs to alert the

organism to their occurrence (Posner, Nissen, Klein 1976) In response to this reduced state of

alert, the subject tends to keep his/her attention "tuned" to the visual system. The reduction in

vision-associated lemmas could be caused by a reduction in the capacity for active tuning, unlike

auditory perception which operates through a more passive reception and does not need to be

kept tuned.

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***

TACT (Textual Analysis Computing Tools) is available [on-line] at:

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/cch/TACT/tact0.html

Summary. This work evaluates the association of age and dream reports. The verbal reports of

148 dreams of elderly people (M age=75,8) were compared with 151 dreams of a control group

of young people (M age=22.0). The dreams were analyzed according to the Jungian vision

(which looks at the dream as a text produced by the dreamer's unconscious while sleeping) using

processing techniques deriving from textual analysis. Significant differences were found between

the number of words denoting emotion, with the young people reporting more explicit statements

regarding emotional states. Significant differences were found also in the verb tenses, with the

older people, when an emotional state was explicitly expressed in the dream texts, shifting

between present and past tense more frequently than the young people. A significant prevalence

in the semantic field of visual sense, with younger subjects using more sentences referring to

sight than the elderly participants.

Table 1

COMPOSITION

OF TEXT

Place

L1.1 Place

designation/Enclosed space.

L1.2 Place

designation/Open space.

L 1.3 Place

designation/Shifts. L 2.0 Place absent.

Context

CON 1 Context

descriptive. CON 2 Context emotional.

CON 3 Context absent.

TEMPORAL

ORGANIZATION

Chronology

CH 1 Action time

present.

CH 2 Action time

absent.

Narrative Sequence

SEQ 1 Narrative linear.

SEQ 2 Narrative broken.

Verb Tenses

T 1 Verb tens/present.

T 2 Verb tens/past.

T 3 Verb tens/alternating.

EMOTIONAL

ORGANIZATION

Speech

DIS 1 Speech direct.

DIS 2 Speech indirect.

DIS 3 Speech alternates.

DIS 4 Speech external.

Characters

P 1 Character/alone.

P 2 Character/extras.

P 3 Character/actors.

P 4 Character/observer.

Situation

S 1 Situation fantastic.

S 2 Situation realistic.

Emotivity

E 1 Emotivity explicit.

E 2 Emotivity absent.

NUMBER OF

WORDS

Number of words.

SEMANTIC

FIELDS

Semantic field/SIGHT.

Semantic field/HEARING.

Semantic field/TOUCH.

Semantic field/SMELL.

Semantic field/TASTE.

Table 2

Odds Ratios and other valutation parameters

(interval of confidence α=0,05)

CATEGORIES

PAR.

Elderly

Control

Place

L1.1

Odd Ratio = 0,4171 Odd Ratio = 2,39726

Int. Conf.= n. s. Int. Conf.= [1,4948 ; 17,6292]

χ2 = n. s. χ2 = 14,08; g.l. =1; p-value < 0,001

L1.2 Odd Ratio = 2,193057 Odd Ratio = 0,455984

Int. Conf.= [1,3573; 14,4804] Int. Conf.= n.s

χ2 =10,96; g.l. =1; p < 0,001 χ2 = n.s.

L1.3


Int. Conf.= n.s. Int. Conf.= n.s.

χ2 = n.s. χ2= n.s.

L2.0 Odd Ratio = 1,843275 Odd Ratio = 0,542512

Int. Conf.= [1,1533; 10,0958] Int. Conf.= n.s.

χ2 =6,89; g.l. =1; p = 0,001 χ2= n.s.

Context

CON1 Odd Ratio =4,945993 Odd Ratio = 0,2021838


χ2 = 52,40; g.l. =1; p < 0,001 χ2 = n.s.

CON2


Int. Conf.= n.s. Int. Conf.= [1,7868; 58,6945]

χ2 = n.s. χ2=15,59; g.l. =1; p < 0,001

CON3



χ2= n.s. χ2 =18,89; g.l. =1; p < 0,001

Narrative

Sequence

SEQ1 Odd Ratio = 11,90101 Odd Ratio = 0,084026


χ2=46,01; g.l. =1; p < 0,001 χ2 = n.s.

SEQ2



χ2= n.s. χ2 = 46,01; g.l. =1; p < 0,001

Temporal

Organization

CH1



χ2= n.s. χ2 = 8,18; g.l. =1; p = 0,01

CH2 Odd Ratio = 3,456422 Odd Ratio = 0,289316


χ2 = 8,18; g.l. =1; p = 0,01 χ2 = n.s.

Situation

S1 Odd Ratio = 3,218891 Odd Ratio = 0,310666


χ2 = 24,18; g.l. =1; p < 0,001 χ2 = n.s.

S2



χ2 = n.s. χ2 = 24,18; g.l. =1; p < 0,001

TABLE 2 (continuing)

Characters

P1

Odd Ratio = 0,551076 Odd Ratio = 1,814629 Int. Confid.= n.s. Int. Conf.= [1,0032; 11,1038]

χ2 = n.s. χ2 =4,12; g.l. =1; p = 0,05

P2



χ2= n.s. χ2 = n.s.

P3 Odd Ratio = 2,000989 Odd Ratio = 0,499752


χ2 = 10,49; g.l. =1; p = 0,01 χ2 = n.s.

P4


Int. Conf.= n.s. Int. Conf. N.s.

χ2 = n.s. χ2 = n.s.

Speech

DS1 Odd Ratio = 2,546584 Odd Ratio = 0,392682


χ2 =15,86; g.l. =1; p < 0,001 χ2 = n.s.

DS2


Int. Conf.= n.s. Int. Conf.= 2,0484; 201,9069]

χ2 = n.s. χ2 = 16,77; g.l. =1; p < 0,001

DS3



χ2 = n.s. χ2 = 6,51; g.l. =1; p = 0,02

DS4



χ2 = n.s. χ2= n.s.

Verb tenses

T1 Odd Ratio = 1,954976 Odd Ratio = 0,511552


χ2 = 7,96; g.l. =1; p = 0,01 χ2 = n.s.

T2



χ2 = n.s. χ2 = n.s.

T3



χ2 = n.s. χ2 = 19,51; g.l. =1; p < 0,001

Emotivity

E1



χ2 = n.s. χ2 = 21,48; g.l. =1; p < 0,001

E2 Odd Ratio = 2,747788 Odd Ratio = 0,363929


χ2 = 21,48; g.l. =1; p < 0,001 χ2 = n.s.

Table 3

Control and Elderly Groups: Differences in Frequencies of Semantic

Field/Sensory Statements in Dream Texts

GROUP Semantic Field

Sight Hearing Touch Smell Taste

CONTROL 110 * 18 5

0

1

ELDERLY 72 11 5 1

0

TOTAL 182 29 10 1 1

VALUES

= 18.59

p = 0.0001

=1,33

p= 0.247

not

appliable (1)

not

appliable (1)

not

appliable (1)

(1) Due to low number of data for Touch, Smell and Taste

Table 4

Compared Parameters Cramer Index %

Elderly Controls Context / place 39,52 2,68

Narrative sequence / Speech 16,75 -

Narrative sequence / Place 16,23 5,84

Emotivity / Context 15,20 18,61

Characters / Speech 10,95 6,15

Narrative sequence / Characters 9,48 -

Verb tens / Speech 6,22 2,70

Verb tens / Characters 5,19 4,64

Narrative sequence/ Situation 4,08 -

Chronology / Situation - 33,20

Verb tens / Place - 4,43

Narrative sequence / Emotivity - 3,91

Emotivity / Characters - 3,65

Emotivity / Speech - 3,57

Chronology / Speech - 3,37

Narrative sequence / Situation - 3,27

Emotivity / Verb tens - 3,20

Place / Speech - 2,54

Place / Characters - 2,32

DREAMS AND AGE

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