Paper Title
What Children can Tell us about Dreams and Mind

Abstract
Dreams are a natural part of the sleep cycle, and they occur regularly in people of all ages. Children as young as 4 to 8 years old, have dreams, as reported in longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of REM awakenings in sleep laboratories. Dreams along with other cognitive processes grow in complexity to near adult patterns as cognitive ability increases, in the early teens. However, the number of children studied regarding their own ideas about dreams has been limited with the notable exception of the systematic observations conducted by Piaget. There is not much information about the ideas of children themselves about dreams, imagination among other cognitive processes not directly observable. We conducted free in-depth interviews with eight middle class children (4 to 8 years old) about topics such as what dreams, imagination and mind are, where they come from, can dreams or imagination be seen, can other people see your dreams, et cetera. Results show that children 7 to 8 years old report twice as many dreams as younger children, and their own role in dreams becomes more active.Although only preliminary results are presented, results show how children’s conceptions about private processes are not static but evolved with age in predictable sequences. Keywords - Children’s ideas, Dreams, Imagination, Mind.