LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA AND LANGUAGE SELECTION IN THE REM DREAMS OF GERMAN-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Sixteen German-English bilinguals were studied in a sleep laboratory f or four nonconsecutive nights each. Half were native English speakers living in Zurich, and half native German speakers living in Atlanta. P resleep thought samples were solicited each evening and REM dream repo rts each night; subjects judged the waking appropriateness of their im agined speech and language phenomena, and also identified waking sourc es of their dream imagery, the following mornings. Incidences of dream ing and of speech therein generally were similar to those of monolingu als. Whether sessions were conducted in German (two nights) or English (two nights) did directly influence language selection in subjects' d reams. Judged appropriateness of language selection to imagined events was very high for thought samples, and high for REM dreams. Sources f or thought samples were generally consonant with the language dominant at study site; for REM dreams this relationship was considerably weak er. Judged waking appropriateness to imagined situations was more stro ngly related to language selection than was the language reference of the supposed sources of those situations.