Cognitive Operations in Dreams Function Case Assignment

Cognitive Operations in Dreams Function Case Assignment

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Cognitive Operations in Dreams Function Case Assignment

Resumo

Counterfactual cognitive simulations are considerations of what might have been if what actually happened could be undone. I hypothesize that counterfactual thought is characteristic of dreams and that cognitive operations in dreams function to identify a norm violation recorded in autobiographical memory and then to re-instate normality in memory by generating counterfactuals to the violation. Dream counterfactuals therefore obey the same constraints on mutability as waking counterfactuals. Both dreaming and counterfactuals typically focus on the self, involve negative affect, and narrative form, promote problem solving and learning by running mental simulations and variations on a given problem theme, employ memory fragments in these various mental scenarios, plausibly rely on neural networks in right limbic and orbitofrontal cortices, and are largely automatic and pre-conscious operations.

 

INTRODUCTION

What type of cognitive activity occurs in dreams? The answer to this question is vitally important for dream research. If we knew, for example, that planning-related cognitions around ‘current concerns’ were the most frequently reported type of cognitive activity that occurs in dreams then we would be justified in exploring the possibility that the function of dreaming had something to do with planning or problem solving. Or if we found that no single type of cognitive activity predominated in dreams and instead that the content of dreams was typically bizarre and random, then dreaming would probably have no important or discernible cognitive function. Finally, if mental states associated with dreaming enacted the same variety of cognitive phenomena as occurs in waking life, then we might conclude that dream cognition is basically no different from waking cognition and that dreaming functioned to satisfy the same constraints and the same goals as waking cognitions.

Several hypotheses concerning the nature of dream cognition have been proposed. Freud (1900, 1953) suggested that dream cognitions were composed of memory fragments that are combined in such a way as to encode libidinal desires of the dreamer. Foulkes (1985) argued that dreams were ‘credible world analogs’ or imaginative simulations of waking life that obeyed fundamental rules of waking cognition but that to a great extent lacked reflective thought. Rechtschaffen (1978) emphasized the single-mindedness quality of the thought that occurs in dreams. We do not usually entertain two thoughts at once during a dream and we usually naively and unreflectively accept whatever occurs in the dream action as real. Reviewing quantitative studies of dream content across a wide variety of populations, Domhoff (1996) found that dream reports were typically fairly representative of waking thoughts and concerns of the dreamer. States (1997) has focused on the narrative form most dream reports take and reasonably supposes that these stories are not just attributable to daytime reporting strategies of the dreamers. Several authors have commented on the occurrence of metaphor and the symbolic nature of dreaming (see for example Lakoff, 1993). These investigators believe that dreams prefer a kind of condensed pictorial language to convey meanings, particularly emotional meanings. Strauch and Meier (1996) reported that most dreams contain non-normal or unfamiliar background settings and that half of the dream reports in their sample contained people who were unknown to the dreamer (strangers). When aggressive interactions occurred in the dream the dreamer was usually the victim. Hartmann (1996) has suggested that dreams are the product of spreading excitation between semantic nodes in a semantic network except that the patterns of activation in dreams are guided by current emotional concerns and make connections more broadly and more inclusively than does waking cognition.

I would like to suggest that dreaming typically involves the activation and processing of counterfactuals. Counterfactual outcomes are outcomes that might have or could have happened but did not. They are mental simulations or analogue models of alternative outcomes to what actually occurred. These analogue-modeling strategies may be the source of much of the pictorial feel or visual nature of dream content. Counterfactual simulations are considerations of what might have been if what actually happened could be undone. There is now abundant evidence, gathered mostly by social psychologists, which suggests that counterfactual thinking is a normal part of the cognitive repertoire of every human being (see papers in Roese and Olson, 1996; and Byrne, 1997; Roese, 1997). Following a given outcome, particularly negative outcomes, we typically engage in imagining an alternative to the outcome. We then cognitively generate simulations of imaginative scenarios that would allow or promote the alternative outcome. We do this typically by changing or mutating various causal antecedents of the outcome. We next compare the simulations of what might have been to what actually happened in an attempt to restore the unwanted outcome to a more normative routine outcome. This may be construed as a kind of tension reduction exercise in which we attempt to reduce the discrepancy between what is actual and what is desired. To the extent that the comparison process reveals that the counterfactual alternatives seem plausible or possible as compared to what actually happened we feel tension, distress or discomfort and are therefore motivated to try to right the situation. By engaging in these counterfactual simulations we learn how to avoid negative outcomes in the future or we learn how to strive more effectively for current desired outcomes. Thus counterfactual thinking is an important part of the learning process.

There are a number of striking processing similarities between dreaming and counterfactual thinking (see  Table ). Both dreaming and counterfactuals typically focus on the self, involve negative affect, and narrative form, promote problem solving and learning by running mental simulations and variations on a given problem theme, employ memory fragments in these various mental scenarios, plausibly rely on neural networks in right limbic and orbitofrontal cortices, and are at least partially automatic and pre-conscious operations. I briefly review each of these processing characteristics below.

 

Enlarge this Image.

 

Negative Affect

Both dreams and counterfactuals frequently involve activation of negative affect. Negative affect is a potent activator of counterfactual thinking ( Roese, 1997 ) and hundreds of dream content studies have repeatedly shown that disproportionately high numbers of dreams involve negative affect ( Domhoff, 1996 , p. 330). It seems plausible to suppose that if negative affect normally activates counterfactual thinking during waking life it may also do so during the dream state.

Both dreaming and counterfactual thought can produce negative affect, as well, through contrast-effects. Downward counterfactuals, mental simulations that entertain a situation that is worse than what actually happened (e.g. “If I had not been wearing my seatbelt I may have been more seriously injured.”) are generally associated with positive mood while upward counterfactuals (comparing to a better reality than what in fact happened—“If only I had worn a seatbelt I would not have been so injured.”) are generally associated with negative affect. Interestingly, people who have experienced identical negative outcomes feel worse if they can generate upward counterfactuals more readily. Medevec, Madey and Gilovich (1995) created two master tapes from TV coverage of the 1992 summer Olympics. One tape portrayed the reactions of all bronze and silver medalists at the time they had learned of their win. The second tape showed athletes as they stood on the medal stand during the award ceremony. Twenty students watched these videotapes without sound and rated the athletes apparent happiness. Winners of bronze medals were rated as happier than winners of silver medals. Analysis of the medalists responses in televised interviews revealed that silver medalists were more likely than bronze medalists to voice the counterfactual thought that they had almost won the gold. People who are objectively better off than others who had not performed as well can nevertheless feel worse than the poorer performers because they are tormented by the counterfactual thought concerning the better result they had come close to achieving.

 

Focus on the Self

Both dreams and counterfactuals primarily focus on the self. This pervasive focus on the self may be related to a version of the so-called fundamental error of attribution: people generally blame themselves when something goes wrong or credit themselves when something goes right. The focus on self in turn may be dependent on the fact that self-initiated actions are more mutable than other initiated actions. Controllable outcomes may be particularly mutable because it is easy to imagine that the person might have chosen and could have chosen to behave otherwise. People, for example, who have lost a relative in an auto accident caused by a drunken driver report engaging in counterfactual thoughts that mentally undo the outcome (Davis and Lehman, 1995). They mostly imagine what they or their relative could have done differently. They do not, however, spontaneously report that they engaged in thoughts that mentally removed the drunken driver. The fact that there are drunken drivers is beyond their control. Perpetrators of crimes are often construed to be part of the immutable background of the crime and thus people do not mentally ‘undo’ that aspect of the crime. In other words they concentrate on what they could have done differently as that is the only variable that appears to be under their control- and so counterfactuals and dreams focus on the self and its efforts to reinstate normality.

 

Narrative Form

Another point of commonality between counterfactuals and dreams is that both are linked to narrative forms of thought. Rosch (1996), for example has pointed out that counterfactual thought is fundamental to causal and to narrative thought. Narratives or stories are usually concerned with surprising or unusual events made notable because they violate some aspect of the background routines and scripts of everyday life. Standard narrative, stories, folktales and myths are very often about some deviation from some social norm of everyday life. The stories undo some salient attribute of one of these normative narratives of everyday life. “Little Red Riding Hood,” for example, decides to take the left path rather than the right path in her weekly walk to grandmother’s house and this decision leads to a whole series of adventures that otherwise would not have happened if the child had kept to the right path. As with counterfactual thinking the entire fable then chronicles attempts by the heroine to return home—to reestablish normality. In some dreams one can actually see the dreamer repeatedly generate a counterfactual scenario along with attempts to return to normal routines typically associated with the setting or situation depicted in the dream. This repeated generation of counterfactual alternatives to the dream theme or dream setting results in a story line or narrative format wherein the dreamer attempts to right or undo the abnormal situation. Take, for example, the following dream of a 25-year-old on the 4th night of a laboratory study of dreaming. The dream report is from  Strauch and Meier, (1996)  and occurred in the second phase of REM.

I am in a major American city where there is a baptism of a rocket for a manned moon capsule. People have come from all over the world and expect something sensational to happen. My sister and Suzanne and I have been invited. Everything took place at a harbor and there was some kind of breakdown at the start and the rocket took off ten or maybe a hundred meters beyond the ramp, and then simply fell back down. And we wondered what might have happened if it had toppled over—just plunged into the water or if it had lifted 200 meters into the air and maybe flipped over and then fallen into the water. If it had gone as high as one kilometer it might have fallen into the city and on top of a skyscraper. And then we fantasized whether the rocket might be propelled by the strength of a statesmen—Giscard Estaing was there too—and thrown upwards like that, which would certainly have caused a debacle, And that was what happened. Several people representing all kinds of nations grabbed the rocket at its bottom, lifted it up and tried to propel it skyward. And the rocket did fly for about one hundred meters, twisted and returned toward the water and everything was tried to save it. And they succeeded once more in putting the rocket into orbit. Finally it did fall into the water. All this time we took photographs from all kinds of perspectives.

The dreamer starts by announcing the setting or situation that will be subjected to counterfactual analysis: there was a breakdown in the takeoff pattern of a rocket about to undergo its maiden voyage. The norm violation in this case is the failed take-off. The subject himself then (counterfactually) states: “And we wondered what might have happened if…” and the generation of counterfactual scenarios begins. As the attempt to undo the failed takeoff proceeds, more stringent, more desperate and more bizarre scenarios are tried in order to undo the negative event. This progressive generation of counterfactual alternatives to a extra-normal or unexpected event may be one source of bizarre imagery in dreams. After a number of scenarios are generated the norm violation is “handled” or undone and counterfactual generation ceases: “…they succeeded in putting the rocket into orbit.”

This example of counterfactual analysis in dream mentation also shows how such analyses may contribute to problem solving in dreams. If the initial setting or theme of the dream involves a current problem or a current concern of the dreamer then counterfactual generation will occur around that theme. Essentially the dreamer will look at the problem from a variety of different perspectives as did our dreamer who concluded his dream with the comment “All this time we took photographs from a variety of different perspectives.” Thus, both dream and counterfactual content typically focuses on abnormal, extreme or unusual events in an effort to reinstate normality.

 

 

 

REFERENCES

1. 1. Byrne, R. M. J.  (1997). The Psychology of Learning and Motivation.  2. Cartwright, R.  (1991). Dreaming.  3. Craik, F. L. M.,  Moroz, T. M.,  Moscovitch, M.,  Stuss, D. T.,  Winoeur, G.,  Tulving, E., &  Kapur, S.  (1999). Psychological Science.  4. Davidson, R. I.,  Davidson, RJ, &  Hugdahl, K  (Eds.) (1995). Brain Asymmetry. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.  5. Davis, CG,  Lehman, D. R.,  Roese, NJ, &  Olson, JM  (Eds.) (1995). What might have been: The social psychology of counterfactual thinking. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  6. Domhoff, G.  (1996). Finding meaning in dreams: A quantitative approach. New York: Plenum Press.  7. Ellman, S.,  Spielman, A.,  Luck, D.,  Steiner, S.,  Halperin, R.,  Ellman, S., &  Antrobus, J.  (Eds.) (1991). In The Mind in Sleep: Psychology and Psychophysiology. New York: John Wiley and Sons.  8. Foulkes, D.  (1982). Children’s Dreams: Longitudinal Studies. New York: John Wiley and Sons.  9. Foulkes, D.  (1985). Dreaming: A cognitive-psychological analysis. Hillsdale: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  10. Freud, S.  (1900/1953). The interpretation of dreams. London: Hogarth.  11. Goldman-Rakic, P.,  Mountcastle, V., &  Blum, F.  (Eds.) (1987). Higher Cortical Function. Handbook of Physiology. American Physiological Society.  12. Hartmann, E.  (1996). Dreaming.  13. Hartmann, E.  (1998). Dreams and nightmares: The new theory on the origin and meaning of dreams. New York: Plenum Press.  14. Hobson, J.,  Pace-Schott, E. F.,  Stickgold, R., &  Kahn, D.  (1998). Current opinion in neurobiology.  15. Kahneman, D.,  Roese, NJ, &  Olson, JM  (Eds.) (1995). What might have been: The social psychology of what might have been. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  16. Kahneman, D., &  Miller, D. T.  (1986). Psychological review.  17. Kasimatis, M.,  Wells, G. L.,  Roese, NJ, &  Olson, JM  (Eds.) (1995). What might have been: The social psychology of counterfactual thinking. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  18. Lakoff, G.  (1993). Dreaming .  19. Medevec, V. H.,  Madey, S. F., &  Gilovich, T.  (1995). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  20. Rechtschaffen, A.  (1978). Sleep.  21. Roese, N. J.  (1997). Psychological Bulletin.  22. Roese, N. J.,  Olson, J. M.,  Roese, NJ, &  Olson, JM  (Eds.) (1996). What might have been: The social psychology of counterfactual thinking. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  23. Rosch, E.,  Friedman, M. P., &  Carterette, E. C.  (Eds.) (1996). Cognitive Ecology. San Diego: Academic Press.  24. Spellman, B. A., &  Mandel, D. R.  (1999). Current Directions in Psychological Science.  25. States, B.  (1997). Seeing in the dark. New Haven: Yale University Press.  26. Strauch, I., &  Meier, B.  (1996). In search of dreams: Results of experimental dream research. Albany: State University of New York Press.  27. Wells, G. L., &  Gavanski, I.  (1989). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  28. Wheeler, M. A.,  Stuss, D. T., &  Tulving, E.  (1997). Psychological Bulletin.

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Notas de rodapé

3  ^  A possible objection to the hypothesis. Animal species other than humans apparently dream but counterfactual thinking is not usually ascribed to nonhumans. We might say the same about human infants who spend much of their sleep time in REM sleep and who probably do not engage in counterfactual cognitions during sleep. The ability to engage in counterfactual reasoning, however, probably depends on a more primal ability to engage in mental simulations of the “world” which is an ability widely distributed across species and in infants. Nonhuman animals and human infants likely entertain some form of mental simulation of the world during sleep. As brain complexity increases (specifically as the frontal lobes come online) mental simulations evolve into the ability to engage in counterfactual reasoning.

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Endereço para correspondência:

Patrick McNamara, Ph.D., Department of Neurology. VA New England Healthcare System. 150 S. Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02130 E-mail:   mcnamarapj@earthlink.net

Assunto: Cognitions (principal); Dream Content (principal)

Classificação: 2380: Consciousness States

População: Human

Identificador (palavra-chave): function of counterfactual thought about what might have been, dreams & dream cognition

Título: Counterfactual thought in dreams.

Autor: McNamara, Patrick11 VA New England Health Care, Dept of Neurology, Boston, MA, US

Título da publicação: Dreaming

Volume: 10

Edição: 4

Páginas: 237-246

Data de publicação: Dec 2000

Formato coberto: Print

Editora: Educational Publishing Foundation

País de publicação: United States

ISSN: 1053-0797

eISSN: 1573-3351

Revisado por especialistas: Sim

Idioma: Inglês

Tipo de documento: Journal, Journal Article, Peer Reviewed Journal

Número de referências: 28

DOI:  http://dx.doi.org.vlibdb.vcccd.edu/10.1023/A:1009485008327

Data de lançamento: 27 Dez 2000 (PsycINFO); 23 Jul 2012 (PsycARTICLES)

Data de correção: 23 Dec 2013 (PsycINFO)

Número de registro: 2000-16367-005

ID do documento ProQuest: 1027831857

URL do documento:  http://search.proquest.com.vlibdb.vcccd.edu/docview/1027831857?accountid=39859

Base de dados: PsycARTICLES

Bibliografia

Estilo de referência bibliográfica: APA 6th – American Psychological Association, 6th Edition

McNamara, P. (2000). Counterfactual thought in dreams. Dreaming, 10(4), 237-246. doi:http://dx.doi.org.vlibdb.vcccd.edu/10.1023/A:1009485008327

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Cognitive Operations in Dreams Function Case Assignment

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