Age Differences in Dream Reports

Abstract

Age is a defining issue in the waking lives of all Americans. It is now time to see if this is also the case in their dreaming lives. Reversing the usual order for discussions of age, we will start with adults and end with children. The chapter begins by comparing college-age findings with those for postcollege groups. It next turns to teenagers (defined as ages 13–17) and then to children (defined as ages 2 to 12). The longest section of the chapter concerns a detailed comparison of conflicting findings on the dream reports of young children. This discussion shows how important the adoption of a common coding system could be in avoiding misunderstandings, but it also shows that with children there are likely to be larger differences between dreams collected in the home and laboratory than we think is the case with adults.