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MONDAY, June 30, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- If you have vivid dreams and remember them, you can call yourself creative.
Dream research at the University of Iowa shows that neither the quality nor length of sleep affects the ability to recall dreams. But people prone to imaginativeness, daydreaming and fantasizing are most likely to remember their dreams.
"There is a fundamental continuity between how people experience the world during the day and at night," says researcher David Watson, a psychology professor at Iowa.
For three months, 193 college students recorded each morning what time they went to bed, what time they woke up, whether they had consumed alcohol or caffeine within four hours of going to bed and whether they remembered any dreams when they awoke.
So-called "evening people" remembered slightly more dreams, as did those who had irregular sleeping hours. However, Watson says the most significant finding was that creativity in the daytime corresponds to nighttime dream recall.
Results appear in a recent issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
More information
Here's where you can learn more about dreams.
