Individual differences in reported dream themes may reflect not only waking emotional and cognitive experiences but also characteristic ways of attending to, interpreting, and regulating bodily signals. Associations between interoceptive awareness and dream themes may reflect variance shared with alexithymia, psychological distress, sleep disturbance, and somatic symptoms. This study examined whether six dimensions of subjective interoceptive awareness accounted for incremental variance in dream themes beyond established emotional, sleep-related, and somatic correlates in adult women.
Existing studies have primarily examined nightmares, nightmare distress, dream frequency, subjective sleepiness, or general sleep quality. They have not established whether multidimensional self-reported interoceptive awareness accounts for incremental variance in overall reported dream themes after emotional, sleep-related, somatic, and dream recall-related correlates are considered simultaneously. The present study therefore examined whether six dimensions of subjective interoceptive awareness jointly accounted for incremental variance in overall Dream Themes Scale scores among adult women beyond age, dream recall frequency, chronic disease, menopausal status, anxiety, depressive symptoms, alexithymia, subjective sleep quality, and somatic symptom burden. The primary hypothesis was that the six interoceptive-awareness dimensions would jointly account for a small but detectable increment in explained variance after the covariates had been entered.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
307
RTEU Guneysu FTRYO
Rize, Turkey (Türkiye)
Interoceptive Awareness
Interoceptive awareness was assessed using the Turkish adaptation of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, Version 2. The original MAIA-2 contains 37 items and eight dimensions. In the Turkish validation study, five original items were removed, producing a 32-item, six-factor solution comprising Emotional Awareness, Attention Regulation, Body Listening, Not-Distracting, Trusting, and Not-Worrying. Items are rated from 0 ("never") to 5 ("always"). Each dimension score was calculated as the mean of its constituent items after applying the direction of scoring specified for the administered form. Higher scores indicate a greater level of the tendency represented by the corresponding dimension.
Time frame: At baseline
Dream Themes
The Dream Themes Scale (DTS) is a 29-item Turkish self-report measure assessing the frequency of themes in recalled dreams. Items are rated from 0 ("never") to 4 ("always"). The total score ranges from 0 to 116, with higher scores indicating more frequent endorsement of the assessed dream themes. The original development study identified five correlated dimensions: Negative Themes, Anxiety Themes, Fear Themes, Effects of Waking-Life Experiences, and Frustration Themes. The DTS total score was prespecified as the primary outcome and was used as a descriptive composite reflecting the overall frequency of endorsed dream themes across five related domains. The five DTS subscales were additionally examined as secondary outcomes to evaluate whether the observed associations were domain-specific.
Time frame: At baseline
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