1. Recap of the Biological Approach
According to the Biological approach, why do we sleep every night?
You have 1 minute to think in your groups, and write down any answers that you have on the post-it.
According to the Biological approach, why do we dream every night?

2. The Cognitive Approach to Sleep & Dreams

3. The Cognitive Approach
The cognitive approach focusses on the role of sleep in memory and thinking. According to this viewpoint, the mind is a processor of information and sleep largely exists in order to facilitate this processing. During sleep, the mind can clean up files, getting rid of unnecessary items and strengthening the link between memories. We need to sleep every night so that important information is stored, and useless information is forgotten.

4. Information Consolidation Theory
The function of sleep is to process information that has been acquired during the day, so we are better prepared for the day to come.
There is evidence that a function of sleep may be to support the formation of long- term memory. The idea is that memories are temporarily stored in short-term memory then gradually get transferred to a long-term memory store, or are forgotten. It is during sleep that this transfer from short-term to long-term memory happens, specifically deep (nREM) sleep.
Without good quality sleep, we would be unable to function properly during the day. Without sleep, we would not form long-term memories, which would affect our sense of self and the knowledge that we have.
Support for this idea stems from a number of sleep deprivation studies demonstrating that a lack of sleep has a serious impact on the ability to recall and remember information.

5. Task
Using the sheet provided, explain 3 theories of sleep that you have learned about.
You should include the following in your explanations:
A summary of the theory and the reason it gives for why we sleep
Evidence to support the theory
Evidence to reject the theory
You can use a booklet to help you if you need!

6. Dreaming & Schemas
A schema is a set of ideas, or a pattern of thought about a particular concept or situation. The key idea is that information is not stored separately, but is linked together with other relevant information. We may have a schema for a school building for example, which will be drawn from our direct experience of school buildings, as well as buildings that we have seen or read about. The result is a concept that includes a typical image or average features. Sleep Schemas The cognitive approach to dreaming would predict links between what we think about during the day and what appears in our dreams. This is partly supported by evidence that dreams usually have a story that makes sense, rather than being a random mixture of memories.

7. Irrational Thoughts & Beliefs
Humans don’t actually work everything out like a computer, but instead rely on simplistic assumptions.
These help the mind to save on limited mental resources such as attention. Essentially, people’s behaviour is not always rational, but is instead often guided by intuition.
Beck's cognitive triad, also known as the negative triad, is an irrational and pessimistic view of the three key elements of a person's belief system present in depression. It was proposed by Aaron Beck in 1976.
(i)           negative view of myself (I am a failure) (ii)          negative view of my situation (It is a disaster and my fault) (iii)        negative view of the future (It is never going to change)
As a result of these views, we exaggerate the negatives in our lives and do not recognise the positives.
This negative view of ourselves can affect the content of our dreams; views of ourselves and learning from that day will be the focus of dreams.

8. Task
Explain how schemas and irrational thoughts can affect a person’s dreams.

9. Reorganisational Theory of Dreaming (Crick & Mitchison)
The purpose of dreams is to store memories more efficiently, acting as a filter to clear out unnecessary information accumulated throughout the day. They argued that dreams help to delete harmful memories (‘reverse learning’), thus avoiding obsessions and anxieties. Dreams are hard to remember as during dreaming the associated information is deleted preventing details from being recalled. Recurring dreams can occur if they have specific emotional meaning or if a person is woken during the dream leading to the dream being remembered and strengthened. We dream to forget, in order to reduce anxiety

11. 2 (b) (i)

12. 2 (b) (ii)

13. 2 (c)