Dreams, Language, and Cognition

摘要

The development of procedures for scoring dreams and association texts and utilizing the procedures for constructing cognitive-psychological models of thought formation and organization in different psychophysiological states in different populations were studied. The performance of blind subjects on typical tasks through which cognitive psychologists study the generation and use of mental imagery indicate that the absence of specifically visual imaginal codes detracts little, if at all, from the accomplishment of skilled representational acts. Apart from their modality of surface representation (visual vs. auditory/conceptual), no differences can be demonstrated between the formal properties of dreams of sighted persons and those of congenitally blind persons. This suggests that specifically visual/imaginal thought processes play no privileged role in dream formation. Test performances also suggests a characterization of mental imagery as a spatial synthesis that need not depend on specifically visual representations.