REM Dreaming and Cognitive Skills at Ages 5-8: A Cross-sectional Study

Eighty children, 10 boys and 10 girls at each of four ages (5, 6, 7, and 8), were awakened from REM sleep on 10 occasions over the course of three nights in a sleep laboratory to report dreams. They also completed a variety of cognitive skill tests. In confirmation of an earlier, longitudinal study (Foulkes, 1982): Dreams were reported relatively seldom (median report rate of 20%); until age 7, their imagery was reported as more static than dynamic; until age 8, a passive-observer role for their self character was most common; until age 8, dream activity evidenced very simple forms of narrative structure; waking visuospatial, but not verbal, skills predicted dream-report rates, with Wechsler Block Design the single best such predictor. These replications argue: That reliable dream-laboratory data can be collected from young children; that dream production/experience depends upon representational intelligence; and that children's REM dream reports can be used to study the development of specifically conscious mental processes and representations.