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ABSTRACT Dreams and Emotion: An Investigation of Contextualizing Images John Davidson and Sarah Lee Archer, School of Psychology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia. John Davidson holds Bachelors degrees in Science and Arts from the University of Queensland and a PhD in Psychology from Newcastle University. He is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Tasmania. He has offered lecture and practical units on dreaming within the School of Psychology for more than 20 years, and is a member of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Summary of Presentation The relationship between prominent visual imagery and emotion in dreams was investigated using 115 home dreams collected from 59 students. As hypothesised, participants’ own ratings of emotion intensity were significantly related to judge-rated image intensity and peaked in the scene with a contextualizing image. The findings support Hartmann’s (1996) theory.
Evaluation Questions.
Abstract The relationship between prominent visual imagery and emotion within a dream was investigated in relation to Seligman and Yellen’s (1987) Dual Imagery Theory and Hartmann’s (1996) Contextualizing Images Theory. Fifty-nine students completed the Boundary Questionnaire (Hartmann, 1991) and the Controlled Word Association Test (Spreen & Strauss, 1991). They each recorded a dream diary over a two-week period and submitted a total of 115 dreams for analysis. Ratings of emotion type and emotion intensity per scene were recorded by participants using Neilsen, Deslauriers and Baylor’s (1991) lexicon-assisted scoring procedure. Prominent visual images were identified and scored for intensity by independent judges, in accordance Hartmann, Kunzendorf, Rosen, and Gazells Grace’s (2001) Contextualizing Images (CI) rating scale. As hypothesised, a significant relationship between participants’ ratings of emotion intensity and judge-rated CI intensity was found. Emotion intensity significantly increased from the pre-CI to the CI scene, and tended to decline in the post-CI scene. Dreams containing a CI had higher overall ratings of emotion intensity than non-CI dreams. No significant effects of boundary score or verbal fluency were noted. The consistent pattern of arousal found between the intensity of prominent visual images and emotion does not support the dream structure proposed by Seligman and Yellen (1987) in which the physiological process postulated to generate vivid visual imagery is not related to the underlying emotion or to the cognitive synthesis which produces the dream. The findings are consistent with Hartmann’s (1996) Contextualizing Images Theory in which particularly vivid or striking imagery in a dream frequently provides a context for a strong underlying emotion.
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