Higher Psychology Sleep, Dreams and Sleep Disorders ... Also supported by Shapiro (1981) who found that marathon runners had more NREM sleep after a race Non-REM sleep has four stages:

Edward Sutherland (2015) – All content the property of the author, from the public domain, used with permission or in accordance with copyright licensing

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Higher Psychology

– Sleep, Dreams and Sleep Disorders Exam Revision


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Sleep, Dreams and Sleep Disorders is the mandatory topic in the Individual Behaviour unit.

Sleep: It is a state of rest which affects both body and mind, where we are unconscious. In a healthy person, this follows a circadian rhythm (ie a daily cycle) Dreaming: This is the images and emotions created by the unconscious mind during sleep. Approach: A general way of understanding Psychology. We look at four of these in the course: Biological, Cognitive, Psychoanalytic and Behaviourist.The first two of these are mandatory, but you need to know at least one other.

What you must know about from this topic: (ie you could be asked specifically about it)

Biological approach and Cognitive approach

Explain this topic in terms of these approaches

Describe the role of the brain in sleep, dreams & sleep disorders

Theories of Sleep – Restoration Theory and Reorganisational Theory

Factors that affect brain function, eg stimulants, depressants or noise

Describe features of the cognitive approach, including information processing; schemata; the role of thought processes, including irrational thoughts or beliefs

Explain how understanding of these approaches and theories can be used to enhance wellbeing

Research study: Dement & Kleitman (1957)

: Czeisler et al (1990)


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Exam Question: Use the Biological Approach to define this topic.

Biological Approach:

- Focuses only on things which are observable - Treats people like any other organism - Explains behaviour in terms of physical structures, including genes and how the

organism has evolved - Uses scientific method

Strengths: Empirical evidence to support theories; Allows predictions to be made about behaviour of related organisms Weaknesses: Ignores the role of cognition; Does not give proper emphasis to the uniqueness of humans, eg through free will

- All behaviour can be explained by looking at activity in the brain and nervous system, and the ways in which organisms and their genes have evolved.

- Sleep in a healthy person seems to follow circadian rhythms, ie it is

something which is repeated daily. It is largely an endogenous process, ie we feel sleepy because of changes in our internal biology. However, exogenous stimuli (ie things from outside which affect us) do seem to be important.

- When light is detected by the retina, a signal is passed along the optic nerve to the SCN (suprachiasmatic nucleus). The SCN then produces a protein which stops the production of melatonin and this keeps the brain aroused.

- At night, the levels of protein produced by the SCN fall, which allows melatonin to be produced. This increases the production of serotonin, which makes us sleepy. This is supported by Schochat et al (1997), who found a correlation between levels of melatonin and the ability to get to sleep.

- In the absence of any light, it appears that the endogenous circadian rhythm

takes just under 25 hours. This is shown by Miles et al (1977) in a case study of a man who had been blind from birth. The man had a circadian rhythm of 24.9 hours and he had to take medication to reduce this to 24 hours.


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- Luce & Segal (1966) found that people in the Arctic Circle sleep for 7 hours a night. In summer the sun never sets, so it is clearly not just the presence of light that affects our sleep patterns.

- Mednick et al (2011) – If we sleep between the encoding and retrieval of information, this improves recall. In other words, sleep appears to help us absorb what we have learned.

- Nishida et al (2001) – Sleep particularly assists declarative memory for emotional rather than non-emotional stimuli.

- Kaestner et al (2013) – Participants taking daytime naps were given drugs to

induce were given drugs to induce increased levels of sleep spindles (short bursts of high frequency waves during Stage 2 sleep). Results suggest that sleepspindles help the consolidation of emotional memory especially for highly arousing and negative events.

- Also supported by the Restoration Theory of Sleep.

- Two types of sleep are REM and NREM (non-REM). According to Oswald (1966), REM sleep refreshes the brain and NREM sleep refreshes the body

- Also supported by Shapiro (1981) who found that marathon runners had more NREM sleep after a race

Non-REM sleep has four stages: In the course of a night’s sleep, we pass through these stages several times Stage 1 – light sleep; beta waves that we have when fully awake become alpha waves, then gradually become theta waves. Frequency reduces and wavelength increases as we move through these stages. We are easily awakened and may experience a sense of falling. Stage 2 – we spend more time on this than any other stage. Brainwaves are synchronised (don’t have to switch between thoughts); muscles relax, blood pressure falls, heart rate slows and temperature reduces. Mainly theta waves. Sleep spindles begin (sudden bursts of brain activity).


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Stages 3 & 4 – heart rate and blood pressure continue to fall; this is deep sleep; wave frequency decreases until we are only having delta waves REM sleep

This begins after about 60-90 minutes. This is where most dreaming happens (Dement & Kleitman 1957). Eyeballs are seen to move underneath the eyelids. Blood pressure rises and wave frequency increases. EEG readings of brain waves are similar to Stage 1 sleep (alpha waves). The amount of REM sleep decreases as we get older. The muscles are paralysed, which is believed to prevent us acting out our dreams.

Biological Approach to Dreaming

Since REM sleep is involved in restoring the mind, and REM sleep is where most dreams happen, dreams must have some value in restoring the mind. Possible ways in which this could happen are:

- Reducing stress, by the unconscious mind trying to make sense of a situation or find a solution to a problem

- Helps us to avoid focusing on unhealthy or unhappy thoughts - Brain tries to monitor and make sense of inputs from the environment - Most mammals appear to experience REM sleep, which suggests that it

provides a function to a complex brain - Solms (2000) shows that dreaming happens even when the pons is damaged,

indicating that dreams are not just the result of activity in the brain stem - Brain scanning using PET (positron emission tomography) shows that parts of

the brain associated with emotion and motivation are very active during REM sleep. The prefrontal cortex, meanwhile, which deals with memory and logic is inactive. This suggests that dreams involve emotion without reasoning, just as Freud predicted with his idea of the id.


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Exam Question: Use the Cognitive Approach to define this topic. Cognitive Approach:

- Focuses on internal functioning of the mind, between receiving sensory inputs and making a response

- Uses an ‘information processing’ model, using analogies to a computer - People behave according to the schema they have of a situation - Based on science, mainly using laboratory experiments

Strengths: Supported by empirical evidence; can be combined with other approaches, eg cognitive + behaviourist in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Weaknesses: Cannot directly observe the internal processes; ignores importance of biology (eg genetic differences) In some respects, the cognitive approach complements the biological approach. For example, it is accepted that the organism does need sleep. However, it is believed that the quality of sleep can be improved by altering schemata (plural of schema) by using cognitive therapy, eg the ideas of Beck and Ellis. Beck (1976) – depression is caused by a cognitive triad:

(i) negative view of myself (I am a failure) (ii) negative view of my situation (It is a disaster and my fault) (iii) negative view of the future (It is never going to change)

- as a result of these, we exaggerate the negatives in our lives and do not recognise the positives

Ellis’s ABC Model (1962) - An activating agent (eg a spider) leads to a - Rational Belief (eg the spider is harmless) or an Irrational Belief (eg the

spider is dangerous), which leads to a - Healthy Consequence (eg ignore the spider) or an Unhealthy Consequence

(eg scream hysterically)


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Calvin Hall’s Cognitive Theory of Dreaming is the main theory we have. According to Hall, dreams are influenced both by our experiences and by the schemata we have about ourselves and our role in the world. If we have a negative schema about some aspect of ourselves, this can lead to disturbed dreams. According to Hall, dreams reveal:

conceptions of self (how we appear to ourselves, the roles we play in life)

conceptions of others (the people in our lives and how we react to their needs

conceptions of the world (our environment: is it a barren wasteland or a

nurturing place?)

conceptions of penalties (how we view the Man. What is allowed? What is

forbidden?)

conceptions of conflict (our inner discord and how we struggle with resolving

it).

Disagrees with Freud that dreams represent wishes. Instead, he believes that they represent how we see the world. Content of dreams can be put into categories using the Hall/Van de Castle scale and we can use these to create a normative baseline. For example, there is no great difference between males and females for many aspects of dreams. However, females are much more likely than males to dream about familiar and indoor settings, and are also less likely to dream about success, failure and striving. This may indicate that females are more concerned about security, whereas males are more concerned about competitiveness. The normative data are based on surveys of white, middle class American students in 1940s/50s Ohio. Hall et al (1979) found similar data, which indicates that it was not restricted to one time period; Hall & Domhoff (1963) found that similar data in older, white Americans, which suggests that it is not restricted to age, although there was less aggression in the dreams of older people. Yamananko et al (1982) found similar features of dreams in Japanese students, which may indicate that these are not restricted to western culture.


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Strengths: Supported by later research; Hall-Van de Castle scale provides means of quantifying the content of dreams Weaknesses: No reliable way of testing whether the interpretation of dreams’ meanings is correct Exam Question: Use the Psychoanalytic Approach to define this topic. Psychoanalytic Approach:

- Focuses on the role of the unconscious – id, ego and superego – and early childhood experiences

- Assumes that personality develops in stages – oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital psychosexual stages

- Conflicts from these early stages can lead to fixations and neuroses - Behaviour depends on how we deal with the demands of our unconscious - Ego uses defence mechanisms to protect the mind, eg repression (the

conscious mind forgets a bad experience); displacement (transfers emotion to a different target); regression (behaving as you did in an earlier stage of development).

Dream symbols

Freud believed that sex is the root cause of what occurs in your dreams. He believed that certain dream symbols were universal. Symbols appear in dreams because they replace unacceptable wishes of the id. Through dreamwork, the censor transforms overtly sexual or otherwise disturbing thoughts into a story which will be acceptable to the conscious mind. referents for which the symbols are surrogates are distasteful to the censor. For example someone might dream of climbing a tree (manifest content) instead of masturbating (latent content).


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An object becomes a symbol because of its resemblance to something else.

Problems with Freud’s dream theory

1. Freud’s theory of symbols-as-disguises is difficult to prove when one night a person has a symbolic dream and the next night they may have an explicit sexual dream. Why are wishes sometimes concealed and sometime s not? Freud has no answer to this.

2. Many people have a real talent for dream interpretation although they may have little or no information about Freudian symbolism. Why would we bother to deceive ourself by dreaming in symbols when dreams can be translated so readily by the dreamer themself? Again Freud has no plausible answer.

3. People have been using symbolism in their speech for centuries using slang, many of which a re sexual in character. How can these symbols be effective as disguises in dreams when they are used in waking life?

4. It does not deal adequately with the question of why there should be multiple symbols for the same referent object, and

5. It assumes that the mind during sleep is capable of performing exceedingly complex operations.

Evaluation of the psychodynamic approach Strengths

Freud is a very influential psychologist, especially in the field of personality- he continues to have an influence on everyday language and culture

The theory suggests a link between dreaming and desire and has generated research, speculation and controversy in relation to the topic of dreaming

A study of patients suffering from strokes reveals that they lose their capacity to dream if there is damage to areas of higher forebrain governing desires (Solms, 1999). This supports the claim that there may be a link between dreaming and desire.

Weaknesses

It is based on the interpretation of dreams and it is not possible to gather evidence to support the theory


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The content of dreams may mirror events during a person’s waking hours and may not be symbolic in any way

Poor research evidence/unscientific

Biased sample - Freud used mainly middle class women from Vienna for his research

Case study method cannot be generalised to the wider population

Emphasis on sexual factors

Exam Question: Use any two Theories to explain this topic.

Restoration Theory

According to Oswald (1966), sleep has two functions: - REM sleep restores the brain. This is supported by the case of Peter Tripp,

who suffered hallucinations and delusions when he stayed awake for eight

days. REM sleep forms a far higher proportion of babies’ sleep than in older

people, and Roffwarg et al (1966) suggests that this is important in developing

the nervous system. According to Roffwarg, REM sleep ensures that the brain

is stimulated which helps in the formation of nerve cells. It has also been

suggested that REM sleep is necessary for the consolidation of memory: in the

first year of life, we learn more than at any other stage of development.

- Non-REM sleep restores the body. During this sleep, the brainwaves produced

become less frequent with longer wavelength. In SWS (slow wave sleep –

Stages 3 and 4), growth hormone is secreted. Shapiro (1981) supported the

connection between NREM sleep and restoration of the body with his finding

that marathon runners had more NREM sleep after running a race.


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Strengths: Supported by research; Explains why we need both REM and NREM sleep Weaknesses: Horne (1978) found that sleep deprivation did not affect participants’ ability to do physical exercise; case of Randy Gardner showed that he suffered no ill effects of being deprived of sleep

Reorganisational Theory of Dreaming

According to Crick & Mitchison (1986), we dream in order to “reduce fantasy and obsession.” During the day, our brains become overloaded with information, much of which is of no use to us. Dreaming allows the brain to clear out the worthless information which we have accumulated. Dreams can be difficult to remember because they consist of images which our brains have ‘deleted’ the connections to. In particular, Crick & Mitchison proposed that dreaming helps us to reduce obsessive thoughts by weakening the associations between them. Where someone has a recurring dream, it is proposed that there must be something causing the associations to be strengthened: this may be due to it having a particular emotional meaning to the dreamer: if they wake suddenly and recall the dream, the memory of it is strengthened. Strengths: Explains why dreams can be difficult to remember. It also explains why we may have the same recurring dream. Weaknesses: there is far more evidence to support REM sleep strengthening memories than weakening the memory for anything; it is not clear how the brain distinguishes between useful and non-useful memories; it is not clear why dreams form ‘stories’ if they are simply information that is being cleared out.


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Exam Question: Explain factors which affect brain function

Factors affecting brain function Light – see above for the relationship between light and sleep Regular bedtimes – Kelly et al (2013) found that children aged between 3 and 7 who did not have regular bedtimes were more likely to misbehave

- these children were not following regular circadian rhythms - showed symptoms similar to jetlag - behaviour showed improvement when bedtimes were made regular even when they had started off irregular

Lack of sleep – Dijk et al (2013) found that participants who slept fewer than 6 hours a night for 12 days showed significant suppression of genes compared to those who slept 8.5 hours a night. This supported earlier research which indicated that people who had too little sleep were more prone to heart disease and obesity. Drug use – Schierenbeck et al (2008) found that users of cocaine found a reduction in both amount of sleep and amount of REM sleep. Users of cannabis found a reduction in the amount of REM sleep whilst amount of NREM sleep increased. In the earlier stages of cannabis use, ppts were more likely to report beneficial effects of sleep compared with those who had been using it for some time. This may suggest that people are initially fooled into thinking that the drug helps their sleep due to the time spent sleeping, whilst the lack of REM sleep means that it is actually detrimental to health. - Ebrahim et al (2013) found similar results for alcohol as Schierenbeck found for cannabis. Many people may take it because it helps them sleep but, although it may help send someone to sleep initially, alcohol actually reduces the amount of REM sleep and this is particularly noticeable in the second half of the night, when most REM sleep occurs. Noise – Hume et al (2012) found that noise causes arousal in the brain even at low levels of noise and it did not matter what type of noise this was or where the person was sleeping. This applied even if the person was not wakened by

the noise. If sleep is disturbed frequently enough, this leads to sleep deprivation which affects our physical and mental health. Other studies suggest that noise at night correlates with heart disease and strokes for elderly people. This could be linked to the fact that heart rate and blood


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pressure are higher in Stages 1 & 2 than in Stages 3 & 4. Exam Question: Evaluate the research study of Dement & Kleitman (1957) DEMENT & KLEITMAN (1957)

AIM To study the connections between REM sleep and dreaming. Three studies tested:

(a) Is there more dreaming in REM than NREM sleep?

(b) Is there a positive correlation between length of REM and perception of length of dreams?

(c) Is there a relationship between eye movements in REM and content of dreams?

METHOD Laboratory experiment Participants – 7 male, 2 female Quiet, dark laboratory Doorbell noise to waken Ps Electrodes attached near Ps eyes (EOG) and on scalp (EEG) (a) Ps woken either (i) randomly (ii) during 3 REM and 3 NREM periods (iii) random but told it was during REM (iv) at whim (b) Ps woken 5 or 15 mins into REM and asked if dream lasted 5 or 15 mins (c) Ps woken as soon as a pattern of eye movement had occurred for 1 minute

VARIABLES WHICH WERE CONTROLLED

Ps wakened in various ways in Study 1 Ps wakened by bell, so no direct contact with researcher. This reduces experimenter bias


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Laboratory was quiet and dark, to reduce distractions Participants abstained from alcohol and caffeine prior to the study

RESULTS (a) All Ps (no matter how they were woken) reported more dreams in REM than NREM (b) Positive correlation between length of REM and Ps perception of dream length (c) Strong correlation between movement of eyes in REM and content of dreams (eg vertical movement and dream of ladders)

CONCLUSIONS People dream more frequently in REM sleep; there is a connection between length of REM sleep and length of dreams and eye movements give indication of dream content

WEAKNESSES Lacks ecological validity, because of taking people out of normal environment Demand characteristics – Ps might have tried to work out what the researchers wanted them to say and behaved differently Researcher bias – possible that the reseacher’s personality/how they asked the questions could affect results Some Ps may not normally sleep in a place that is quiet or dark or avoid caffeine or alcohol before going to sleep. This could affect the outcome Limited sample (very few Ps and mainly men), so may not be generalised to bigger group


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CZEISLER et al (1990)

AIM To identify whether controlled exposure to bright light and complete darkness can be used to quickly reset the SCN’s control over circadian rhythms.

METHOD Laboratory experiment Participants – 8 male Ps subjected to night-shift conditions. The control condition was ordinary room light at night and daylight on the journey home to sleep. In the experimental condition, Ps had bright light at night and blacked-out dark conditions on return home to sleep.

VARIABLES WHICH WERE CONTROLLED

Conditions in which participants worked and slept Ps of similar age and gender; medical and psychological tests to ensure they were healthy

RESULTS Ps in the experimental condition were sleepier during the day and slept for longer than those in the control group. They were also more alert and worked more effectively at night.

CONCLUSIONS It is possible to overcome the circadian pacemaker; by controlling their work and sleep environments, it is possible to help workers adapt very quickly to nightshift conditions. Supports the importance of light in brain function and sleep habits

WEAKNESSES Lacks ecological validity, because of taking people out of normal environment Small sample, difficult to generalise Possible extraneous variable: those in experimental group may behave differently because they were subjected to the greatest difference to their normal lives.

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Higher Psychology Sleep, Dreams and Sleep Disorders ... Also supported by Shapiro (1981) who found that marathon runners had more NREM sleep after a race Non-REM sleep has four stages: