David Foulkes
David Foulkes examines the relationship between children’s dreaming and cognitive development. His Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness, published by Harvard University Press in 1999, connects narrative dreaming with developing waking abilities and reflective awareness. The developmental interpretation concerns how cognitive skills enable richer dreaming. It does not establish that dreaming creates consciousness.
In a 1990 study with colleagues, Foulkes examined laboratory REM dream reports and waking cognitive skills. The abstract reports that visuospatial skills, rather than verbal skills, predicted dream report rates. The authors interpret this as evidence that dream production and experience depend on representational intelligence. The abstract was checked through Crossref’s publisher record; the full study was not reviewed.
Dream reports require careful interpretation. A child’s ability to remember and describe a dream can differ from the experience during sleep. Sparse laboratory reports therefore cannot determine when all conscious experience begins. The public source review records this limit and its restricted access to Foulkes’s book. Its account relies on publication information and a publisher description, without verified book quotations. The publication record identifies the source.
This profile does not infer a position on artificial consciousness from developmental dream research.
Known for. Developmental research on children's dream reports and narrative dreaming
Coverage on this site
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