Comparing the Characteristics of
Autobiographical Memories and Memories for Dreams
Caroline L. Horton is a PhD
student, supervised by Professor Martin Conway, exploring the
memory for dreams. She is a tutor at the University of Leeds, a
lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University and a part-time tutor
for the Open University, all based in the UK.
Abstract
Although the characteristics of
autobiographical memories and dream memories have been collected
in various studies separately, they have never been systematically
compared. Postgraduate students (N=20) were recruited and asked to
take part in an experiment on memory. They generated
autobiographical memories in a 5 minute fluency task, and then did
the same for dreams. Significantly more autobiographical memories
were reported (p<0.0001). Based upon date-matching criteria, 3 of
each type of memory were selected for each participant and a
42-item questionnaire was completed for that memory, requesting
characteristic information. Although no significant differences
were found between ratings of the dream and autobiographical
memories at the time of the experience, repeated measures ANOVAs
found significantly more detailed ratings for the autobiographical
events along a host of dimensions, in terms of the memory itself
for those events (p<0.001, Bonferroni corrected). This was the
case for the earliest, other and recent memories, which did not
differ significantly for any of the dimensions. Thus there is
little overlap between memories for dreams and normal
autobiographical memories in terms of accessibility of those
memories, and in terms of the characteristics of those memories.
Results are discussed in terms of the continuity hypothesis of
dreaming and waking cognition and consciousness. Data is currently
being collected in order to further specify the processes of
retrieval of these different types of memory, in a diary study
comparing recall and recognition. The results for this shall be
available by the time of the Conference.
