Everyone has dreams, even the animal also has. But depend on each one’s personal experience our dreams are different between each other. Someone can remember the dream, someone can’t. In the world there has a small percentage of people who can be aware of that the current experiences belong to a dream and may has the ability to control the dreams. This phenomenon is called lucid dream.
In this essay I’m going to look at the article from four different sources and analysis them.
First, “What are lucid dream?” from Audrey Celia’s answer on Quora. The article are talking about how can we have lucid dream. The author claim the methods in article is the effective way to induce lucid dream and the methods are based on her research and personal experience. According to Celia’s article WILD, WBTB, MILD, and FILD would be using to induce lucid dream. She stance lucid dream could be achieved by different ways and she commend WILD technique and FILD technique.
This language in first subtitle is informal, words for example “Yep”, “really”, “something like that.” The subtitle tells the central idea and those sections are similar in format. “Some people found this scary which I don’t understand.” is a quote from the subtitle of section 5 this sentence is emotional than other part of the article. Based on the article that we can conclude this article’s style is briefly, informal and emotional, doesn’t have peer reviewing. The genre is media.
Quora is a website which open to everyone who are on internet. Their target direction is anyone who has questions about some topic and who wants to seeing things in different angles. Thus, in lucid dream this specific topic target the people who are interest in lucid dream only.
In section 5, Celia introduced 2 ways to lucid dream, first one is continue the sleep after wake up 30 minutes, second is using WILD technique and FILD technique after wake up 30 minutes and list the results that would happened after using those methods. The article doesn’t give the definition of WILD, WBTB, MILD, etc. She gives a sentence at the beginning of the article “Look it up on Google.” And doesn’t have the academic term in the article, she write in article “based on my research and personal experience”; the article is easy to understand.
Second, “Seeking Roots of Consciousness, Scientists Make Dreamers Self-Aware” from Virginia Hughes, national geographic magazine. This article is about what factors would relate with inducing lucid dream. The magazine articles are more formally than the articles on quora and shorter than it. It has 2 central ideas, first one is 40-Hertz waves was associated with lucid dream “Voss had previously identified the 40-Hertz currents as the possible key to lucidity.” and second one is lucid dream can be used as clinical method to adjust some disorder “The study might have clinical implications for treating conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and nightmares”. The author stance lucid dream was related with gamma waves (40-Hertz waves) during a sleep stage and it can be used as treatment methods.
This article is quote others word and mostly are experts, it is a second hand resource. Hughes describe an experiment in the article briefly and summarize the results. The different between Quora article and Hughes’ article is Hughes’ has experiment data in it “which triggered lucidity 77 percent of the time”. The article is less emotional than Quora article but both of them are easy to understand. The article was giving the compact experiment steps, experiment’s purpose and the results. The genre of this article is magazine.
National geographic magazine primarily contains articles about science, geography, history, and world culture. Based on the research of national geographic magazine, people who were born in 1946-1996 has the biggest percentage 81% among the readers, the median is 47.4 years old. HHI (household income) with $100,000+ has the biggest percentage 35.1% which can be consider as middle class. And the people who are Attend/Grad. College+ is 61.7% among the national geographic reader. Managers/Professionals/ related occupation are the biggest percentage 39.8%. Married people tales 49.3%. Thus, the audience of national geographic is mostly middle-aged, middle class, married, professionals, attend/graduate college, and the people who are interest in or study about lucid dream.
Third, “What is lucid dreaming?” from Michael O. Schroeder, US news. The article is concerning 3 parts of lucid dream. Those are 1.what is lucid dream? 2.how can we induce the frequency of lucid dream? 3.does the lucid dream dangerous? This article has the same format as the national geographic article both of them has two subtitle. Schroeder introduced the background of lucid dream and given the concept of REM which is the stage dreams happened during sleep stages. Schroeder stance in his article lucid dream can be induce by taking the supplement galantamine. Lucid dream are harmless but it has some bed impact on person’s mental health. “use of such techniques to deliberately induce lucid dreaming was associated with increased mental health symptoms.”
This article are similar with magazine article the only one difference is Schroeder gives the background details about dreams, “To start, know when your REM sleep occurs.” Schroeder conclude the research results but doesn’t have details about the percentage of population that have had lucid dream. Like magazine article, they both quote experts’ words “Some people have lucid dreams more frequently naturally. Some people never have lucid dreams,” he says.” The article connected the daily life and lucid dream. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (is it possible to escape Freddy Krueger in the worst kind of dream?), to “The Matrix” series (red pill or blue pill?) and “Inception,” The article is formally, medium length, quote experts’ words, second hand resource. The genre of this article is news.
U.S. News & World Report is an American media company that publishes news, opinion, consumer advice, rankings, and analysis. According to U.S. News website their 40% of audience are the age between 23-34 years old, the mean HHI (household income) is $98,598 and their educated professionals includes executive (C-level), community and social services title, state and local government employee, hospital/health care employee. Among the audience Democrat was taking 30.9%, Republican was taking 20.3%, independent was taking 25.6% and other was taking 23.2%. The most topic was searched in U.S. News website is brokerage accounts, diet programs, physicians, business travel insurance and cruises. So, the audience of U.S. News are 23-34 years old, educated, middle class, supporting democrat.
Fourth, “Lucid dream induction using three different cognitive methods” from Sophie Dyck, Michael Schredl, Anja Kühnel, International Journal of Dream Research. The main idea of this article is discuss the effect of using particular methods for induce lucid dream. The article gives the summary at the beginning which is different with other articles. The authors stance the three cognitive methods: keeping a dream diary, the Wake-up-back- to-Bed technique, and reality testing/reflection did not significantly increase the lucid dream frequency within experiment samples.
First paragraph introduced 3 different types of increasing lucid dream frequency methods: Keeping a dream diary, applying the Wake-up-back-to-Bed technique at home, and the “classical” reality testing/reflection paradigm clearly. The authors was given the details about experiment and a lot of accurate data. “group effect: F = 0.0; p = .841; time effect: F = 0.3; p = .807; interaction: F = 0.1; p = 0.415.” This article also has academic term “ANOVA was also used to compare DLQ means in the last week of testing.” and it contains data table in the report, the authors explains the meaning of data and the connection between them. “Retrospective dream recall frequency (p = .275) and lucid dream frequency (p = .155) did not vary between experimental groups.” This article are the longest than others, it has many data to support the central idea as well. And it has multiple authors, references pages and peer reviewed. The genre is report. The report has a lot of data from the lab and demonstrated the relation between the data and the lab. Each quote or concept has references and professional terms.
Since International Journal of Dream Research is an academic website, thus the audience are psychology/medical school students or experts of this academic area.
Over all the articles, media type are depends on personal point of view and experience, it may not seeing things in objective way. Magazine and news are the most similar with each other in format but they are both second hand resource, formally doesn’t have emotional words, easy to understand. Non of those types has details about the data or even doesn’t have data. Academic type is different with others, it has references page, multiple authors, data tables and academic terms which make the article hard to understand.
