Does Early-Night REM Dream Content Reliably Reflect Presleep State of Mind?

In a small-scale study, Rados and Cartwright (1982) found that presleep thought samples, but not postsleep-elicited significant concerns, could be matched with a night's REM dream content on a cross-participant basis. We collected either presleep thought samples or significant concerns for later blind judge matching with 8 participants' mentation reports from the night's first REM period over 8 nonconsecutive nights each. Although some persons' first-REM dreams were successfully identified by judges from presleep ideation, both vs. presleep ideation from the same person on other nights and vs. presleep ideation from other persons on the same night, there was no overall group pattern suggesting continuity of dream content with presleep ideation. We also did not replicate the claimed superiority of thought samples vis à vis significant concerns. Reliable content analysis showed a different proportional distribution of life experiences in waking and dream ideation.