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Spontaneous thoughts, such as dreaming and mind wandering, constitute a significant portion of human consciousness. Yet, the precise phenomenological and content-related similarities and differences between dreaming and waking mind wandering remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we address this gap by comparing 340 dreaming and mind wandering questionnaires that depending on the answers of participants ranged from 13 to 27 dimensions. While previous research primarily used laboratory settings and probe-caught methods, we adopted a naturalistic self-caught design to capture spontaneous experiences in daily life, which play a role in human cognition and well-being. Data was explored with a mixed-effect binary logistic regression models, which resulted in identifying dimensions that significantly predicted either dreaming or mind wandering and can therefore be considered as a dimension along which both states differ. In addition, the relative frequency distributions of all dimensions were used to illustrate similarities between dreaming and mind wandering. Finally, we compared a subgroup of dreaming and mind wandering containing visual imagery. Visual and immersive imagery and scene-organization are central features of dream phenomenology and at the centre of leading dream theories. To further investigate the immersive quality of dreaming and mind wandering, we considered features related to self-experience such as Feeling of Presence and Self-perspective. Overall results showed a complex picture of differences and similarities between dreaming and mind wandering that can inform future research about subtypes and help identify along which dimension dreaming might be considered as intensified compared to mind wandering
Kirberg et al. (Mon,) studied this question.