Individual differences in visual memory, imagery style and media experience and their effect on the visual qualities of dreams
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The aim of this research thesis was to investigate whether there are any cognitive factors that might influence reported dream colour.This question was prompted by the existence of a period of time in the early 20th century when the majority of people reported having greyscale dreams, and coloured dreaming was treated as an anomaly.On the level of individual differences, age, visual imagery abilities and memory for colour were singled out as the potential contributors to reports of greyscale dreaming.The rise and fall of black and white television and the changes in the methodology of research were preliminarily identified as the possible causes of the historical trends in the colour of dreams, and the first empirical studies in this thesis address these issues.Subsequent studies explored the role of visual imagery ability, and individual differences in cognitive representation and memory in determining the reporting of colour in dreams.Overall a total of seven studies are reported.The range of methods employed in these studies was diverse and required the development of new measures of colour memory and visual imagery.Some studies employed diaries to gather dream data and allowed cross-sectional (e.g.age) or cross-cultural comparisons.Others were more laboratory-based and explored data concerning visual memory and imagery performance with diverse dependent measures (e.g.response time data).In addition these
Author: Ewa Murzyn
Institution: University of Dundee
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2155506913