Symposium: Dream research methodology: Methodological issues affecting the collection of dreams

This article focuses attention on the perennial issue of home versus laboratory recording situations for the garnering of dream reports. Studies into the experimental control over procedures for both waking and interviewing are reviewed. Against this background, an experiment into the relationship between REM/NREM sleep and visual imagery is reported. We found that, having corrected for total word count, visual imagery still made an independent contribution to REM reports. This finding is evaluated in the light of differential cognitive mechanisms underlying dream formation during sleep.