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Our two-track mind continues to monitor our environment while we sleep. A sen-
®
AP Science Practice sory stimulus — a particular odor or a phone’s ringing — may be instantly and ingeniously
Research woven into the dream story. In a classic experiment, researchers lightly sprayed cold water
on dreamers’ faces (Dement & Wolpert, 1958). Compared with sleepers who did not get the
In the experiment in which cold-water treatment, these people were more likely to dream about a waterfall, a leaky roof,
researchers sprayed water on
the faces of sleeping individuals, or even about being sprayed by someone.
the independent variable (the So, could we learn a foreign language by hearing it played while we sleep? If only. While
factor that is manipulated by the sleeping, we can learn to associate a sound with a mild electric shock (and to react to the sound
investigator) was the cold-water
treatment. Can you identify the accordingly). We can also learn to associate a particular sound with a pleasant or unpleasant
dependent variable (the outcome odor (Arzi et al., 2012). But we do not remember recorded information played while we are
that is measured)? soundly asleep (Eich, 1990; Wyatt & Bootzin, 1994). In
fact, anything that happens during the 5 minutes just
before sleep is typically lost from memory (Roth et al.,
1988). This explains why people with sleep apnea, who
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
repeatedly awaken with a gasp and then immediately
fall back to sleep, do not recall these episodes. Ditto for
someone who awakens momentarily, sends a text mes-
sage, and the next day can’t remember doing so. It also
explains why dreams that momentarily awaken us are
mostly forgotten by morning. To remember a dream,
get up and stay awake for a few minutes.

Why We Dream

In his landmark book The Interpretation of Dreams,
Meredith Southard/Cartoon Stock Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
Sigmund Freud offered what he thought was “the
most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my
good fortune to make.” He proposed that dreams
provide a psychic safety valve that discharges other-
wise unacceptable feelings. Freud viewed a dream’s
manifest content (the apparent and remembered
story line) as a censored, symbolic version of its
latent content, the unconscious drives and wishes
(often erotic) that would be threatening if expressed
“I’d like to extend a special welcome to those of you who are joining us for the first
time, as part of a nightmare you’re having.” directly. Thus, a gun might be a disguised represen-
tation of a penis.
Freud considered dreams the key to understanding our inner conflicts. However, his
critics say it is time to wake up from Freud’s dream theory, which they regard as a sci-
entific nightmare. Legend has it that even Freud, who loved to smoke cigars, acknowl-
edged that “sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.” Freud’s wish-fulfillment theory of dreams
has largely given way to other theories. “There is no reason to believe any of Freud’s
specific claims about dreams and their purposes,” observed dream researcher William
Domhoff (2003).
To file away memories. The information-processing perspective proposes that
dreams help sift, sort, and fix (consolidate) the day’s experiences in our memory. Some
research supports this view. When tested the day after learning a task, people who were
deprived of both slow-wave and REM sleep did not do as well as those who had slept
undisturbed (Stickgold, 2012). Other studies have shown similar memory lapses for new
material among people awakened every time they began REM sleep (Empson & Clarke,
1970; Karni & Sagi, 1994).
Brain scans confirm the link between REM sleep and memory. The brain regions that
were active as rats learned to navigate a maze, or as people learned to perform a visual-
discrimination task, became active again later during REM sleep (Louie & Wilson, 2001;

110 Unit 1 Biological Bases of Behavior

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