Interpreting Dynamic Relationship between Dreaming Cognition and Acculturative Anxiety

It was hypothesized that acculturative anxiety would be represented in the dream contents of immigrants’ nighttime dreams in the USA. According to “Lee Acculturation Dream Scale” (Sang Bok Lee, 2005: Psychological Reports, 96, 454-456), Korean-Americans’ dreams represented their acculturation processes. Also, a simple t-test on “Lee Cross-cultural Anxiety Dream Scale” means showed significant difference between Korean and Korean-American groups (Lee, 2010). Dreaming cognition needs to be recapitulated in the light of acculturative anxiety. In this report, the authors articulate cross-cultural coding systems of ”anxiety dream” and pinpoint two implications for the future research direction. First of all, dream scales to measure acculturation rate and acculturative anxiety need to be utilized when cognitive scientists delineate “anxiety domainspecific” interpretation of dreaming cognition. Secondly, dreaming brain (fMRI data), dreaming mind (acculturative anxiety), and cultural-affective neuroscience are interconnected in the inter-disciplinary, empirical, and experiential perspectives on the theory of mind (TOM).