THE EFFECTS OF CURRENT-CONCERN AND NONCONCERN-RELATED WAKING SUGGESTIONS ON NOCTURNAL DREAM CONTENT

In previous research, presleep suggestions influenced nocturnal dream content. It was hypothesized that suggesting topics associated with pa rticipants' current concerns would influence dream content more than s uggesting other topics. Ten students spent 4 nights in a sleep laborat ory: an adaptation night, a baseline night, and 2 nights under suggest ions to dream about a concern-related or other topic. Concern-related suggestions influenced dream content-largely its central imagery-more than did other suggestions, which did not differ from nonsuggestion. N umber of transformations within dreams was uncorrelated with dream viv idness, contrary to extended activation-synthesis theory. Thus, the co ncern-related status of suggestions moderates their effectiveness and, inconsistent with extended activation-synthesis theory but consistent with current-concerns and distributed-activation theories, motivation al and volitional processes actively influence dream content.