Dreaming, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2000 Daily Events and Dream Content: Unsuccessful Matching Attempts Francine Roussy, 1 Manon Brunette, 1 Pierre Mercier, 1 Isabelle Gonthier, 1 Jean Grenier, 1 Michelle Sirois-Berliss, 1 Monique Lortie-Lussier, 1 and Joseph De Koninck 1,2 Event descriptions (ED) from 6 different days and 6 corresponding morning dream reports (DR) were obtained from 13 participants. In a within-participant matching task, 14 un- trained undergraduate student judges attempted to pair 6 EDs to 6 corresponding DRs for each of 6 participants. In a between-participant matching task, the same judges attempted to match 6 EDs from different participants to their respective DRs. For the within-participant task, a significance test for a single mean indicated that judges were unable to match dreams to their corresponding daily events at better than chance levels. For the between-participant matching task, however, it appears that judges were able to make pairs at significant levels but were still making on average less than 2 out of the possible 6 pairs per item. In a ranking task, two different judges read 1 ED and 6 DRs and then ranked the dreams from 1 to 6, 1 being most likely to be related to the ED and 6 being the least likely. Statistical tests revealed that dreams did not obtain better ranks (closer to 1) when they were the correct match than when they were not. These data appear to demonstrate that independent observers are unable to detect a clear resemblance between participants’ daily events and manifest dream content. KEY WORDS: dream content; presleep ideation; continuity. It has long been posited that the sources of dream content lie in waking life. Freud (1900/1978), for example, was one of the first modern authors to voice his opinion on the continuity between waking and dreaming. He believed that in every dream there was some point of contact with experiences of the previous day. This observation was known as the “day residue” effect. Over the years, several studies have attempted to determine the proportion of dream material which stems from the previous day. In 1968, Hartmann noted that 94% of the waking events incorporated into 800 of his own dreams came from the day of the dream. He further stated that these incorporations were most frequently unimportant to the dreamer’s 1 School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. 2 Correspondence should be directed to Joseph De Koninck, University of Ottawa, School of Psychology, P.O. Box 450, Station A, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1N 6N5; (613) 562-5800 ext. 1234. 77 1053-0797/00/0600-0077$18.00/1 C  2000 Association for the Study of Dreams