Gackenbach, J.I. & Osborn, T. & Petriuk, C. (2017, June). Presence in Dreams and Video Games: What Does the Dreamer Think? Poster presented at IASD conference, Anaheim, CA.

1. Introduction
Presence is important in the virtual reality (VR) literature and
indeed has been pointed to as the most important quality that
designers are trying to capture in the new generation of VR
headsets. This idea has been applied in previous research to
dreams. That is, the sense of being there while in a dream.
Revonsuo (2006) has pointed out that it is an important
consideration in understanding consciousness. It has also
recently been investigated as associated with dreaming and
video game play (Gackenbach & Rosie, 2011). Dreams were
reported in that study and an adaptation of a classic media
presence inventory (Lombard & Ditton, 1997) was developed
and administered to the respondents. However, they were
never asked why they thought their dreams were or were not
high in presence in an open-ended question format.
Subsequent studies asked this question in an open ended
format. This report is about those comments by respondents.
Method
In three studies conducted in 2015 and 2016, both in person
and online, each research participant was asked to provide a
recent dream, answer questions about their sense of
presence in that dream and to explain why they thought they
were there in the dream in their own words. Dreams were
gathered from 417 respondents. A smaller subset, 83,
explained why they thought their dream was high in
presence. Additional information gathered from all three
studies was gaming history, sex and age.
Results
These open-ended responses were coded by two
independent judges and 10 categories of responses were
identified. The dimensions identified and illustrative phrases
from the comments are listed below. A Likert type scale was
used to code the comments and the dreams for each
category. These scales ranged from 1 (not at all) to 5 (highly)
for the first four categories which were coded for all dreams
and all comments:
• Lucid: the dreamer explicitly knowing that they are.
(dream mean=1.50; comment mean = 1.18)
• Control: individuals being able to influence their own
actions within the dream. (dream mean=1.36; comment
mean = 1.10)
• Body Movement: Direct mention. “I was running”, “I was
climbing over a wall”, “I was jumping over hurdles.” (dream
mean=1.59; comment mean = 1.00)
• Cognition within Dream: Direct thoughts about the dream
within the dream, reference to specific cognition within the
dream, can be reflections within the dream or explicit “I
thought” language: “I thought to myself that he seemed like
a nice guy”, “I wondered what we were doing here”. (dream
mean=1.80; comment mean = 1.02)
The rest of the categories were only coded when present:
• Felt Real Emotionally: Individual expresses use of “I felt
language” and/or emotional language. “I felt nervous”; “I
felt embarrassed”; “I was anxious”; “I was sad”. (42% in
dreams; 17% in comments)
• Felt Present: Strong sense of presence indicated by an
individual’s language of being in the dream, “It was as
though I was there”. ”. (6% in dreams; 55% in comments)
• Felt Real Sensory – Minor: Minor sensory experiences
such as body position, taste, touch, pain: “I felt his touch”,
“my jaw hurt”, “the food tasted sweet”. (7% in dreams; 10%
in comments)
• Felt Real Sensory – Major: Major sensory experiences
such as auditory or visual: “I heard the phone ringing”, “the
music sounded beautiful”, “I saw the reflection.” (10% in
dreams; 4% in comments)
• Natural Elements Convincing: To be defined as elements
of nature, such as weather, temperature, or outdoor
settings. When natural elements are present they are to be
determined as convincing to the reader. “The water looked
beautiful”, “The air was cold outside of the car window but
inside the car was warm.” (34% in dreams; 6% in
comments)
• Waking life Elements were Accurate: To be defined as
specific reference to the elements within the dream being
accurate to the dreamer’s waking life. “I was wearing what
I would be normally” or “they were my friends in real life”.
(44% in dreams; 24% in comments)
• Emotions Present after Dream Ends: Emotions linger
after dream is over. “I felt sad throughout the day after the
dream” or “I woke up and felt angry”. (6% in dreams; 11%
in comments)
• Pre Lucidity: Determined as states of: “it felt odd to have
this type of dream”, “I was unsure if it was a dream”, false
awakening, “I was out of my body”. (6% in dreams; 1% in
comments)
To some extent these categories overlapped with some of the
questions in the presence survey, but other elements were
also found. For instance, the judges observed that aspects
that caused an individual to believe that their dream had
presence included likeness to waking life. It was important
that the dream character was representative of their waking
self through the clothes they wore to the way that they spoke.
Another notable feature for resemblance to waking life was
the presence of a significant other. If a significant other was
present respondents commented that it was also important
that the significant other’s behaviours resembled waking life.
Relationship to Gaming History
All four studies were included in these analysis in order to get
enough males. Gaming history variables were factor analyzed
separately for males and females with factor scores being
saved. These were then correlated to the dream reports.
There were few significant correlations between dreams
coded for presence and gaming and the pattern was different
for the sexes. For the 72 males gaming was associated with
more body movements in dreams (r=.23) but fewer lucid (r=-
.40) and natural element (r=-.42) aspects. For females
gaming was positively associated with prelucidity (r=.596) but
negatively associated with emotions present after the dream
(r=-.64) and fewer natural elements (r=-.23). As there were so
few associations these could be due to chance alone.
Presence in Dreams and Video Games:
What does the dreamer think?
Jayne Gackenbach, Tianna Osborn, and Chelsey Petriuk