Summary: A new study finds that dream recall is influenced by a person’s attitude toward dreaming, proneness to mind-wandering, and sleep patterns, with factors like lighter sleep, younger age, and seasonal variations playing a role, challenging previous assumptions about the effects of age and sex.
Key Takeaways:
- Three Main Predictors of Dream Recall: Attitude Toward Dreaming: People with a positive view of dreams tend to recall them more. Proneness to Mind-Wandering: Those who frequently let their minds drift during the day are more likely to remember their dreams. Sleep Patterns: Lighter sleep stages correlate with higher dream recall.
- Findings suggest dream recall reflects the interaction of cognitive traits and sleep dynamics, rather than being purely random.
- The data may serve as a baseline for future studies on clinical populations and pathological alterations in dreaming.
Some people wake up vividly recalling their dreams and can tell precise stories experienced during the night, while others struggle to remember even a single detail. Why does this happen?
A new study, conducted by researchers at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca explores the factors that influence “dream recall” and suggests individual traits and sleep patterns shape this phenomenon.
Carried out in collaboration with the University of Camerino, the study was conducted from 2020 to 2024 and involved over 200 Italian adults, aged 18 to 70, who recorded their dreams daily for 15 days while their sleep and cognitive data were tracked using wearable devices and psychometric tests. Each study participant was given a voice recorder to report, every day right after the awakening, about the experiences they had during sleep.
Participants reported whether they remembered having dreamed, if they had the impression of having dreamed but did not remember anything about the experience, and to describe the content of the dream if they could remember it. At the beginning and end of the dream recording period, participants were subjected to psychological tests and questionnaires that measure factors from anxiety levels to interest in dreams, proneness to mind-wandering, up to memory and selective attention tests. Participants also wore an actigraph.
According to the study, dream recall, defined as the probability of waking up in the morning with impressions and memories from a dream experience, is predicted by three main factors:
- attitude towards dreaming,
- proneness to mind wandering,
- and trait differences in overnight sleep patterns.
Some more specific findings summarized in the paper include:
- The study revealed that people with a positive attitude toward dreams and a tendency for mind-wandering were significantly more likely to recall their dreams.
- Sleep patterns also seemed to play a critical role: individuals who experienced longer periods of light sleep had a greater likelihood of waking with a memory of their dreams.
- Younger participants showed higher rates of dream recall, while older individuals often experienced “white dreams” (a sensation of having dreamt without recalling any details). This suggests age-related changes in memory processes during sleep.
- Seasonal variations emerged, with participants reporting lower dream recall during winter compared to spring, hinting at the potential influence of environmental or circadian factors.
Contrary to previous research, the investigators did not find significant effects of age and sex on dream recall (other studies have found higher recall in younger individuals and female individuals).
“Our findings suggest that dream recall is not just a matter of chance but a reflection of how personal attitudes, cognitive traits, and sleep dynamics interact,” says lead author Giulio Bernardi, PhD, a professor of general psychology at the IMT School. “These insights not only deepen our understanding of the mechanisms behind dreaming but also have implications for exploring dreams’ role in mental health and in the study of human consciousness.”
“Data collected within this project will serve as a reference for future comparisons with clinical populations,” adds Valentina Elce, PhD, a researcher at the IMT School and first author of the study, in a release. “This will allow us to move forward the research on the pathological alterations of dreaming and their potential prognostic and diagnostic value.”
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