Dream lucidity positively correlates with reality monitoring.

People who frequently have lucid dreams—awareness of being in a dream—tend to be better at telling the difference between memories of real events and memories of imagined events. In one experiment with 31 college students, higher dream lucidity correlated with better performance on a reality monitoring test. A second experiment with 109 participants found that those with more lucid dreams showed smaller differences in sensory details between memories of perceived and imagined events. These results suggest that frequent lucid dreamers have a superior ability to distinguish external from internal experiences, which may help protect against reality monitoring errors.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Dream lucidity, the awareness of consciousness in dreams, is linked to functions that support reality monitoring in differentiating between internally and externally generated memories. However, lucid dreams have been argued to result from thin reality-fantasy boundaries that lead to reality monitoring errors. To examine the relationship between dream lucidity and reality monitoring, we recruited 31 college students to rate their dream lucidity for 7 days and then complete a reality monitoring test in Experiment 1, observing a positive correlation between dream lucidity and reality monitoring. In Experiment 2, 109 participants rated dream lucidity and the memory characteristics of perceived and imagined events. Dream lucidity was negatively correlated with differences in sensory details between the memories of perceived and imagined events. The findings indicate that individuals with high dream lucidity have a superior ability to discriminate between externally and internally generated events that are susceptible to reality monitoring errors.