A COMPARISON OF THE CONTENT OF MENTATION REPORTS ELICITED AFTER NONRAPID EYE MOVEMENT (NREM) ASSOCIATED SLEEP UTTERANCE AND NREM “SILENT” SLEEP

Mentation reports elicited immediately after nonrapid eye movement (NREM) associated sleep utterance were compared to mentation reports elicited during NREM “silent” sleep. These comparisons were made between 74 pairs of reports, each member of which was elicited from the same subject, on the same experimental night and from proximate times of the night. Subjects were 23 paid “normal” adult chronic sleep talkers. Content analysis and mean total word count of reports from the two conditions revealed no significant differences with the sole exception that reports after sleep utterance were much more likely to contain an indication of the subject actively vocalizing in an imaginary sleep experience. It was concluded that many NREM associated sleep utterances arise out of ongoing streams of NREM mentation and provide valid indices of NREM mental content because the two types of reports are indistinguishable with the sole exception as described.