Frequency of sport dreams in athletes

Abstract

Empirical studies largely support the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. For example, it has been shown in past research that sport students dream more often about sports than psychology students do, presumably reflecting their engagement in sport activities and sport theory. The present study tested the hypothesis whether frequency of sport dreams is related to the amount of time spent on waking sport activities for elite athletes. As expected, the amount of time spent with sport activity was directly related to the frequency of sport dreams. Secondly, the amount of competitions was also related. The findings also indicated that other factors such as emotional involvement associated with competitions might be of importance in explaining the relationship between waking activities and dream events. Future studies using longitudinal designs will shed more light on this relationship and will help derive a more precise formulation of the continuity hypothesis.