I'm doing LaBerge's prospective memory training, and i noticed something interesting.

I have by far the most success with the prospective memory tasks when I visualize the target EXACTLY beforehand. For example, these were the targets for the other day's task, and what I visualized in the morning:

  • Write - I visualized a pen in my hand and the sensation of me writing on a white sheet of paper
  • Feel pain - I visualized stubbing my toe and yelling in agony
  • Hear my name - I visualized my mother calling my name
  • Drink something - I visualized drinking water out of a small cup


Now... the only targets that I HIT that day were the writing and the pain, and I think this is because they were exact matches with my visualizations. At one point in the day, I actually happened to stub my toe, and the realization that I had hit a target was instantaneous. I remembered that pain was a target before I even felt any pain

With the writing, I was writing with a pen on a white sheet of paper and came to the realization that I was writing after about 5 seconds of writing, probably because I had visualized the sensation of writing, and this took a few seconds to kick in.

I missed the other two targets, and I think this is because I didn't visualize specifically enough. I missed the targets all day long as I drank water out of large cups / things other than water, and as people other than my mother said my name.


So, I guess what I'm going to take away from this is that, in thinking of lucid dreaming as a prospective memory task as LaBerge did, it would be helpful to make visualize dreamsigns very specifically.

But how can you visualize about a very specific dreamsign that you don't know you're going to have? E.g., hallways appear in my dreams a lot, but they appear with varying shapes, sizes, colors, lengths, etc. Is there a way to make dreamsign visualizations stronger without making them so specific that they will never appear in your dreams?