Pychologists have confirmed what writers have always believed: that books are literally the stuff of dreams.

    A survey has confirmed that readers of Iris Murdoch or JK Rowling are more likely to have bizarre dreams than people deep into a history of the crusades. People with a taste for fiction experienced dreams that contained more improbable events, and their dreams were more emotionally intense. The survey also found that people who read thrillers were no more likely to have nightmares. But those with a weakness for science fiction were rather more likely to wake up suddenly with a cold sweat.

    The study, according to Mark Blagrove, of the University of Wales, is perhaps the first experiment to determine a link between the waking world and dreams. Dr Blagrove and colleagues distributed 100,000 questionnaires about sleep patterns and literary tastes, and got more than 10,000 replies.

    They found that 58% of all adults had experienced at least one dream in which they were aware they were dreaming ?nbsp;and that women could recall more dreams than men. Older people seemed to dream less and have fewer nightmares.

    Around 44% of children said their dreams were affected by the books they had been reading. "Children who report reading scary books have three times the number of nightmares as children who don't," said Dr Blagrove.

    心理學家證實了作家們一直以來的信念：書籍的確是夢的素材。

    一項調查證明，讀愛麗絲·默多克或是羅琳的作品的人比鉆研十字軍東征史的人更容易做怪夢，而小說愛好者的夢帶有更強烈的感情色彩，其中包含的奇異事件也更多。調查還發現讀恐怖小說的人并不一定會多做噩夢，而喜歡科幻小說的人卻更容易帶著一身冷汗驚醒。

    按照威爾士大學的馬克·布拉格羅夫的說法，這項研究可能是考察夢與現實之間關系的第一次實驗。布拉格羅夫博士和他的同事發出了10萬份關于睡眠型態與閱讀趣味的調查問卷并收到了超過1萬份回復。

    他們發現成人中有58%做過至少一次這樣的夢：在其中他們知道自己在做夢。他們還發現女性能比男性記起更多的夢境。老年人的夢似乎要少一些，也更少做噩夢。

    大約44%的孩子說他們正在閱讀的書籍影響到了他們的夢境。布拉格羅夫博士說：“正在讀嚇人的書籍的孩子做噩夢的次數是那些沒讀孩子的3倍。”