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This article focuses on psychotherapists' descriptions of emotionally disturbed adolescent poor and good sleepers. The self-reports of poor sleepers have been established as accurate predictors of disturbed sleep patterns, of psychopathology, and of higher than normal levels of physiological arousal. Although the poor sleeper and the insomniac patient may be inaccurate in estimating the absolute amount of their sleep difficulty, there is a high positive correlation between the subjective complaint of poor sleep and the presence of objective sleep disturbance in the sleep laboratory.

This study explored the relationships between several aspects of dream reports and creative potential. Ten high creative and 10 low creative S s were selected from a pool of 423 male and female university undergraduates on the basis of uniformly high or low performance on several measures of creativity. Dream reports were collected under carefully controlled sleep laboratory conditions. Dream reports of high and low creative Ss were discriminable along identifiable dimensions of dream setting, novelty, uniqueness, and number of content elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major purposes of this study were to test the effects of altering the typical home sleeping arrangement on subsequent laboratory sleep, to determine the nature of transient disturbances in EEG sleep patterns of habitual good sleepers, and to explore sex differences in sleep patterns of married couples. Twenty-eight married good sleepers slept three consecutive nights in the laboratory under both sleep-with-spouse and sleep-alone conditions. Continuous EEG and eye movement recordings were obtained throughout the seven hour bed period. Analyses of variance showed a significant increase in the amount of Stage 4 sleep and a significant decrease in REM sleep under the sleep-alone condition. Transient changes in sleep patterns of good sleepers were not associated with the usual correlates of poor sleep. Sex differences showed females with significantly more Stage 4 sleep, more total sleep, and fewer awakenings. It was concluded that the typical home sleeping arrangement may be a significant subject-selection variable in sleep and dream research. The major findings were discussed within the framework of a cortical homeostasis hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to measure the reliability of scoring all-night EEG sleep records. To determine the amount of inter-rater agreement of scoring EEG sleep stages, 28 raters from 14 different sleep laboratories scored the same 398 minute sleep record. Statistical analyses showed varying amounts of inter-rater agreement across sleep stages with St. REM showing the highest reliability and delta stages the least inter-rater agreement. A comparison of raters with High, Medium, and Low experience revealed lower within-group variability for Stages 1, 2, 3, and 4 for the more experienced raters. It was concluded that increased reliability and comparability of results could be obtained readily by increased standardization of recording techniques and scoring criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]