Pychologists have confirmed what writers have always believed: that books are literally the stuff of dreams.

A survey has confirmed that readers of Iris Murdoch or JK Rowling are more likely to have bizarre dreams than people deep into a history of the crusades. People with a taste for fiction experienced dreams that contained more improbable events, and their dreams were more emotionally intense. The survey also found that people who read thrillers were no more likely to have nightmares. But those with a weakness for science fiction were rather more likely to wake up suddenly with a cold sweat.

The study, according to Mark Blagrove, of the University of Wales, is perhaps the first experiment to determine a link between the waking world and dreams. Dr Blagrove and colleagues distributed 100,000 questionnaires about sleep patterns and literary tastes, and got more than 10,000 replies.

They found that 58% of all adults had experienced at least one dream in which they were aware they were dreaming ?nbsp;and that women could recall more dreams than men. Older people seemed to dream less and have fewer nightmares.

Around 44% of children said their dreams were affected by the books they had been reading. "Children who report reading scary books have three times the number of nightmares as children who don't," said Dr Blagrove.

心理学家证实了作家们一直以来的信念：书籍的确是梦的素材。

一项调查证明，读爱丽丝·默多克或是罗琳的作品的人比钻研十字军东征史的人更容易做怪梦，而小说爱好者的梦带有更强烈的感情色彩，其中包含的奇异事件也更多。调查还发现读恐怖小说的人并不一定会多做噩梦，而喜欢科幻小说的人却更容易带着一身冷汗惊醒。

按照威尔士大学的马克·布拉格罗夫的说法，这项研究可能是考察梦与现实之间关系的第一次实验。布拉格罗夫博士和他的同事发出了10万份关于睡眠型态与阅读趣味的调查问卷并收到了超过1万份回复。

他们发现成人中有58%做过至少一次这样的梦：在其中他们知道自己在做梦。他们还发现女性能比男性记起更多的梦境。老年人的梦似乎要少一些，也更少做噩梦。

大约44%的孩子说他们正在阅读的书籍影响到了他们的梦境。布拉格罗夫博士说：“正在读吓人的书籍的孩子做噩梦的次数是那些没读孩子的3倍。”