Dreams of Hearing-Impaired, Compared With Hearing, Individuals Are More Sensory and Emotional

An early report suggested that the sensory content of dreams differed between those who are and are not hearing impaired; more recent studies have indicated there are no differences. We surveyed 86 students attending a special needs school for the deaf regarding sensory content of their dreams, and compared the results with those of 344 hearing students attending an ordinary high school. Participants were given a 25-item questionnaire regarding remembered dreams of the preceding month that measured dream recall frequency, vividness of dreams, and the frequency of experience of 9 sensory modalities and 10 emotions. The results indicated that by controlling for dream recall frequency, the hearing-impaired participants experienced nightmares, lucid dreams, taste, smell, pain, temperature, hope, anger, fear, tense feelings, surprise, and shame more often and hearing less often than the hearing participants.