Reading. The importance of dreams

THE IMPORTANCE OF DREAMS

In 1960, an American psychiatrist named William Dement published

experiments dealing with the recording of eye-movements during sleep. He showed

that the average individual's sleep cycle is punctuated with peculiar bursts of eyemovement,

some drifting and slow, others jerky and rapid. People woken during

these periods of eye-movement generally reported that they had been dreaming.

When woken at other times they reported no dreams. If one group of people were

disturbed from their eye-movement sleep for several nights on end, and another

group were disturbed for an equal period of time but when

they were not exhibiting eye-movements, the first

group began to show some personality disorders,

while the others seemed more or less unaffected.

The implications of all this were that it was not

the disturbance of sleep that mattered but the

disturbance of dreaming.

EXERCISE 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as:

COLUMN A COLUMN B

a) interrupt at intervals

b) strange; unusual

c) short and sudden period

d) moving slowly with no purpose or direction

e) moving abruptly and unevenly

f) show; display

g) something that is suggested or hinted at by

something else

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EXERCISE 2: Choose the correct answer according to the passage.

1. During the research, those woken while dreaming

A) were hardly affected at all

B) were the ones who had had personality disorders

C) reported that their dreams affected their personalities

D) were not showing any eye-movement

E) displayed signs of disturbance in their personalities

2. We can infer from the passage that during sleep,

A) people dream all the time

B) the type of eye-movement indicates the type of dream

C) there is no eye-movement when the person isn't dreaming

D) drifting and slow eye-movement coincides with a dream that can't later be reported

E) one's eyes are constantly moving

3. The research implied that

A) people with personality disorders dreamt more than others

B) interrupting dreams was more significant than interrupting sleep

C) dreamless sleep led to fewer personality disorders

D) dreams lasted for equal periods of time in different people

E) if sleep was disturbed, then dreams later became disturbed as well

EXERCISE 3: Complete the sentences by selecting words from Column B in EXERCISE 1.

1. It wasn't until the ship nearly grounded itself that the onlookers

realized that the crew was in trouble.

2. She has some very ideas which both confuse and amuse me.

3. He has been symptoms of stress ever since he took on that new job.

4. The minister's speech was by spontaneous rounds of applause.

5. We could hear occasional of gunfire from behind the enemy lines,

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