The Influence of Age and Mental Imagery Ability on Dreams

Previous research finds that aging affects both memory and the vividness of dreams, wherein older individuals experience less vivid dreams and are less likely to remember their dreams than younger adults. Interestingly, while research suggests aging impacts dream-vividness, research has not found imagery ability to influence dream-vividness. In fact, individuals with Aphantasia (i.e., a complete lack of visual imagery while awake) can experience vibrant visual dreams and remember them. Such research suggests a need to better understand the factors that contribute to one’s ability to remember their dreams (dream memory) and the imagery experienced while dreaming (dream imagery). Thus, the current study investigates how the interaction between age and mental imagery ability influences one’s dream memory and dream imagery. We predict that older relative to younger adults, regardless of mental imagery ability, will report less dream imagery and dream memory. Using Amazon’s Mechanical-Turk, we asked participants to take part in an online survey where they self-reported information about their dream imagery, dream memory, mental imagery ability, and age. Mental imagery ability was indexed based on responses to the question, “How would you rate your own degree of engaging in mental imagery”. Dream memory was assessed via : “To what degree do you remember your dreams?” Finally, dream imagery was measured via a question stating, “When you dream, how much mental imagery occurs in your dream?” All three questions were Likert-type scaled. Results revealed older adults had less dream imagery and dream memory in comparison to younger adults. Additionally, those with a higher index of mental imagery had a higher amount of dream imagery and dream memory than those with a lower index of mental imagery. Future analyses will continue to explore the relationship between these variables.