A study on the individual differences of the experience of hypnagogic imagery

Abstract

Having defined the distinction between hypnagogic imagery and dreams, a preliminary study on the individual differences in the experience of visual hypnagogic imagery was conducted. (1)A questionnaire on visual hypnagogic experience was administered to 796 students. The results suggested that previous researches on the incidence of this experience might have suffered from ambiguous definitions. (2) The Scale of Mental Imagery (Hasegawa, 1992) was administered to 330 of the same students, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire to 305 students, and S-A Creativity Test (Sozosei-shinri-kenkyukai, 1969) to 221 students. The frequency of hypnagogic experiences was significantly associated with the scores of "the vividness of mental imagery", "neuroticism", and "creativity". (3) Based on these results, a proposed research problem on hypnagogic imagery was discussed.