GCSE OCR Psychology - Sleep and Dreaming

• Examples of sleep hygiene

  Block out sun and streetlights; don't check phone 1 hour before bed; don't work in your bedroom; wake up and go to bed at the same time every day; no caffeine, alcohol or nicotine before bed; no clocks facing you; decluttered and tidy bedroom.
• Examples of relaxation techniques

  Clearing the mind, deep breathing, relieving tension in the body.
• Impact of neurological damage on sleep

  Damage to the SCN can result in insomnia. Due to damage, melatonin production is not triggered by lack of light. Cure: melatonin can be taken and sleep hygiene and relaxation techniques can be used.
• The nervous system and insomnia

  Insomnia is predominantly caused by anxiety. The SNS responds to anxiety with fight or flight. The PNS counters this response. Extreme, prolonged stress makes it difficult for the PNS to do its job. Relaxation techniques try to control this (e.g. deep breathing normalises heart rate - what PNS should do).
• Sympathetic nervous system (SNS)


  A division of the nervous system that controls the fight or flight response when faced with stress.
• Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS)


  A division in the nervous system that regulates organ and gland function during rest, and counters the response of the sympathetic nervous system.
• Relaxation techniques:


  Strategies for making people feel more physically and mentally relaxed.
• Applications: sleep hygiene


  Strategies that support a good night's sleep.
• Criticisms of Williams - Study relies on self-report

  Social desirability could have been a factor as participants may have been embarrassed about some of their dreams/fantasies and left them out.
• Criticisms of Williams - Lack of control over independent variables


  Participants were reporting from home, so they may have been writing about dreams from non-REM sleep and some fantasies could have taken place during drowsiness. This could affect differences found.
• Criticisms of Williams - Sample too small and difficult to generalise.

  There were 120 reports but only 12 participants, of which 10 were female, so it was gender biased and could affect the nature of dreams and fantasies.
• Williams - Conclusions

  Findings support the activation synthesis theory of dreaming which predicts a difference between REM sleep dreams and waking fantasies.

  Dreams contain more bizarreness than fantasies.
• Williams - Results

  Bizarreness was nearly 2x as prevalent in dream reports than in fantasy reports.

  Bizarreness in dreams for nearly all participants, whereas bizarreness in fantasies for only a few participants.
• Williams - Procedure


  During one term, students asked to record any dreams remembered upon waking. Mental activity occurring during waking was also recorded if it related to fantasising. 60 dream reports and 60 fantasy reports were selected from the sample on the basis of length and because they described a visual experience. Analysed in 2 stages: locus of bizarre item (where and what was happening) and type of bizarreness. 3 judges scored the reports for bizarreness. They worked individually for high inter-rater reliability.
• Williams - Sample


  12 students - 2 male, 10 female - enrolled in a biopsychology course at Harvard Uni. Age 23 - 45.
• Williams - Research method and design


  Natural experiment, used self report.
• Williams et. al. - Activation synthesis experiment - Aim


  To assess the bizarreness in dreams and fantasies to support the activation synthesis theory of dreaming.
• Criticisms of the activation synthesis theory - Patients with damage to the brainstem do not stop dreaming.


  This contradicts the theory. Even with the usual signals not being sent, they still dream.
• Criticisms of the activation synthesis theory - Dreams often follow patterns


  Dreams can be recurring or quite coherent. This does not fit with the idea that they are generated by random brain activity.
• Criticisms of the activation synthesis theory - Too reductionist


  Dreams are complex and packed full of meaning. you cannot reduce this down to simple neuronal processes.
• What does the theory day happens in our brains, which causes dreams?

  Neuronal activity increases in the pons and random brain waves are generated. These waves travel up to the cerebral cortex in areas that would normally interpret sensory information, e.g. occipital lobe, limbic system. The information is treated as real sensory information. Through interpreting the stimulation, synthesis occurs; using stored memories to make sense of the information.
• Activation synthesis theory

  Dreams are a result of our brains trying to make sense of brain activity during sleep.
• Wolfman criticisms - The Wolfman may only represent people with mental health problems.


  Even if we accept that we can make some generalisations based on the Wolfman's experiences, they may not apply to people with good psychological health. Everybody dreams, but not everybody has traumatic life histories or mental health issues.
• Wolfman criticisms - Sample size too small


  It is not reliable to bass a theory of dreams, which is supposed to apply to all, on the case of one person. It might be that other people don't use dreams as a way of symbolising traumatic experiences.
• Wolfman - conclusions

  The unconscious mind can have a significant effect on behaviour. It illustrates the process of repression, where traumatic events are pushed into the unconscious mind as a safety mechanism. However, it also shows that repressed memories can find their way back into the conscious mind through dreams that people have and then recall.
• Wolfman - results

  Manifest content:at night, lying in his bed. It was winter. Six/seven white wolves sitting on a walnut tree in the window. Big tails like foxes and ears pricked up like dogs.Latent content:Wolves symbolise the father. The wolves watching the dog were a reversal of the child watching the sex act. The tree represents the Christmas tree, wolves instead of presents. White represents bed linen and paren't underclothes. Big tails represent big dicks. Fear of wolves symbolise a fear of father.
• Wolfman - design


  Longitudinal case study. Carried out a series of interviews between 1910 and 1914, which he analysed 15 years later.
• Wolfman - sample


  Freud used the pseudonym 'Wolfman' to protect the patient's identity. Later revealed to be Sergei Pankejeff: a man in his 20s from a wealthy Russian family. In 1906 his sister killed herself and in 1907 his father killed himself, leading to Pankejeff's own depression.
• Criticism of Freud's theory - Cultural and historical bias


  Freud's themes, especially how dreams were interpreted, my have been influenced by the culture at the time. E.g. in Freud's time society was very strict about sex, so the idea of repressing lust and desire made sense. However today people have more liberal attitudes to sex, but this doesn't mean that the manifest content of dreams are very different.
• Criticism of Freud's theory - It is difficult to test

  Its concepts are not objective enough and dreams cannot be easily verified. How do we know people are recalling their dreams accurately? A big part of the theory relies on the unconscious mind, but this can't be asked about/observed.
• Criticism of Freud's theory - The theory is too subjetive

  Dream interpretation is very open to opinion as a number of people can hear the same description of a dream and have different interpretations of it.
• Dreams - wish fulfilment


  When you dream, your ego's defences are lowered, so repressed wishes can reach your conscious awareness. Repressed wishes and memories are distorted in our dreams. The more unpleasant the wish or memory, the more distorted it becomes.
• How do we access the unconscious mind?


  Freud believed the only way was to bring the unconscious into the conscious through dreams.
• Id


  Obeys the pleasure principle (every wish must be satisfied). Mostly in the unconscious mind.
• Super ego


  The internalised voice of parent's and society's morals. The source of guilt and shame.
• Ego


  Obeys the reality principle (we can't have everything we want)
• Latent content

  The underlying meaning of the dream hidden in the latent content.
• Manifest content


  The actual content of your dreams.
• Wish fulfilment

  Satisfying urges and desires.
• Repression


  The process of pushing unpleasant thoughts and experiences into the unconscious mind.