title: Will students pass a competitive exam that they failed in their dreams?
abstract: We tested whether dreams can anticipate a stressful exam and how failure/success in dreams affect next-day performance. We collected information on students' dreams during the night preceding the medical school entrance exam. Demographic, academic, sleep and dream characteristics were compared to the students' grades on the exam. Of the 719 respondents to the questionnaire (of 2324 total students), 60.4% dreamt of the exam during the night preceding it. Problems with the exam appeared in 78% of dreams and primarily involved being late and forgetting answers. Reporting a dream about the exam on the pre-exam night was associated with better performance on the exam (p=.01). The frequency of dreams concerning the exam during the first term predicted proportionally higher performance on the exam (R=0.1, p=.01). These results suggest that the negative anticipation of a stressful event in dreams is common and that this episodic simulation provides a cognitive gain.
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris F-75005, France; Sleep Disorder Unit, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, APHP, Paris, France; Centre de Recherche de l'Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle, UPMC-Paris 6, Inserm UMR_S 975, CNRS UMR 7225, France. Electronic address: isabelle.arnulf@psl.aphp.fr.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Arnulf
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris F-75005, France; Sleep Disorder Unit, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, APHP, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Laure
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Grosliere
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris F-75005, France; Sleep Disorder Unit, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, APHP, Paris, France; Centre de Recherche de l'Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle, UPMC-Paris 6, Inserm UMR_S 975, CNRS UMR 7225, France.
authors.forename: Thibault
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Le Corvec
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris F-75005, France; Department of Biostatistics, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, ER4, France.
authors.forename: Jean-Louis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Golmard
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris F-75005, France.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Lascols
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris F-75005, France.
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Duguet
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D003099:College Admission Test; D004325:Dreams / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anticipation; Anxiety; Competition; Distressing; Dreaming; Dreams; Nightmare; Performance; Sleep; Threatening