SUSIE: So Luke, for our next psychology assignment we have to do something on sleep and dreams.

苏西：所以卢克，下一个心理学作业我们必须做一些关于睡眠和梦的事情。

LUKE: Right. I've just read an article suggesting why we tend to forget most of our dreams soon after we wake up.

卢克：对。我刚刚读了一篇文章，阐明为什么我们往往在醒来后很快就忘记了大部分的梦。

I mean, most of my dreams aren't that interesting anyway, but what it said was that if we remembered everything, we might get mixed up about what actually happened and what we dreamed.

我的意思是，反正我的大部分梦都没那么有趣，但上面说的是如果我们记住了所有的事情，我们可能会把实际发生的事情和梦搞混。

So it's a sort of protection.

所以这是一种保护。

I hadn't heard that idea before.

我以前没有听过这个想法。

I'd always assumed that it was just that we didn't have room in our memories for all that stuff.

我一直以为只是我们的记忆中没有空间容纳那些东西。

SUSIE: Me too. What do you think about the idea that our dreams may predict the future?

苏西：我也是。你对我们的梦可能预示未来的想法怎么看？

LUKE: It's a belief that you get all over the world.

卢克：这是一个你在世界各地都能接触到的看法。

SUSIE: Yeah, lots of people have a story of it happening to them, but the explanation I've read is that for each dream that comes true, we have thousands that don't, but we don't notice those, we don't even remember them.

苏西：对，很多人都有一个发生在他们身上的故事，但我读过的解释是，每实现一个梦，我们就有几千个梦没有实现，但我们没有注意到这些，我们甚至不记得它们。

We just remember the ones where something in the real world, like a view or an action, happens to trigger a dream memory.

我们只记得现实世界中的一些事情，比如一个风景或一个动作，碰巧会引发梦境记忆。

LUKE: Right. So it's just a coincidence really.

卢克：对。所以这真的只是巧合。

Something else I read about is what they call segmented sleeping.

我读到的另一件事是他们所说的分段睡眠。

That's a theory that hundreds of years ago, people used to get up in the middle of the night and have a chat or something to eat, then go back to bed.

这是一个几百年前的理论，人们习惯半夜起床聊天或吃点东西，然后回去睡觉。

So I tried it myself.

所以我自己尝试了一下。

SUSIE: Why?

苏西：为什么？

LUKE: Well it's meant to make you more creative.

卢克：嗯，这是为了让你更有创造力。

I don't know why. But I gave it up after a week.

我不知道为什么。但一周后我放弃了。

It just didn't fit in with my lifestyle.

只是不符合我的生活方式。

SUSIE: But most pre-school children have a short sleep in the day don't they?

苏茜：但是大多数学龄前儿童白天都睡得很短，不是吗？

There was an experiment some students did here last term to see at what age kids should stop having naps.

上学期有些学生在这里做了一个实验，看看孩子们应该在什么年龄停止午睡。

But they didn't really find an answer.

但他们并没有真正找到答案。

They spent a lot of time working out the most appropriate methodology, but the results didn't seem to show any obvious patterns.

他们花了很多时间制定出最合适的方法，但结果似乎没有显示出任何明显的规律。

LUKE: Right. Anyway, let's think about our assignment.

卢克：对。无论如何，让我们考虑一下我们的任务。

Last time I had problems with the final stage, where we had to describe and justify how successful we thought we'd been.

上次我在最后阶段遇到了问题，我们必须描述和证明我们认为自己有多成功。

I struggled a bit with the action plan too.

我也有点纠结于行动计划。

SUSIE: I was OK with the planning, but I got marked down for the self-assessment as well.

苏西：我对计划没意见，但我的自我评估也被扣分了。

And I had big problems with the statistical stuff, that's where I really lost marks.

我在统计方面有很大的问题，这就是我真正失分的地方。

LUKE: Right.

卢克：对。

SUSIE: So shall we plan what we have to do for this assignment?

苏西：那我们要计划一下这次作业要做什么吗？

LUKE: OK.

卢克：好的。

SUSIE: First, we have to decide on our research question.

苏西：首先，我们要决定我们的研究问题。

So how about ‘Is there a relationship between hours of sleep and number of dreams?'

那么‘睡眠时间和做梦次数有关系吗？’

LUKE: OK. Then we need to think about who we'll do the study on. About 12 people?

卢克：好的。然后我们需要考虑我们将对谁做这项研究。大约12个人？

SUSIE: Right. And shall we use other psychology students?

苏西：对。我们要用其他心理学学生吗？

LUKE: Let's use people from a different department. What about history?

卢克：让我们用不同部门的人。历史呢？

SUSIE: Yes, they might have interesting dreams! Or literature students?

苏西：是的，他们可能会做有趣的梦！还是文学专业的学生？

LUKE: I don't really know any.

卢克：我真的一个都不知道。

SUSIE: OK, forget that idea. Then we have to think about our methodology.

苏西：好吧，忘了这个想法吧。那我们就要思考我们的方法论。

So we could use observation, but that doesn't seem appropriate.

所以我们可以用观察，但这似乎不太合适。

LUKE: No. It needs to be self-reporting I think. And we could ask them to answer questions online.

卢克：不。我认为这需要自我报告。我们可以让他们在线回答问题。

SUSIE: But in this case, paper might be better as they'll be doing it straight after they wake up … in fact while they're still half-asleep.

苏西：但在这种情况下，纸可能更好，因为他们醒来后会直接做这件事…事实上，在他们还半睡半醒的时候。

LUKE: Right. And we'll have to check the ethical guidelines for this sort of research.

卢克：对。我们必须检查这类研究的伦理准则。

SUSIE: Mm, because our experiment involves humans, so there are special regulations.

苏西：嗯，因为我们的实验涉及人类，所以有特殊的规定。

LUKE: Yes, I had a look at those for another assignment I did.

卢克：是的，我是为另一个我做过的作业看的那些（特殊的规定）。

There's a whole section on risk assessment, and another section on making sure they aren't put under any unnecessary stress.

有一整个章程是关于风险评估的，还有一个章程是关于确保他们不会承受任何不必要的压力。

SUSIE: Let's hope they don't have any bad dreams!

苏西：希望他们没有做噩梦！

LUKE: Yeah.

卢克：对。

SUSIE: Then when we've collected all our data we have to analyse it and calculate the correlation between our two variables, that's time sleeping and number of dreams and then present our results visually in a graph.

苏西：然后当我们收集完所有的数据后，我们要分析它，计算我们两个变量之间的相关性，即睡觉时间和做梦次数，然后用图表直观地展示我们的结果。

LUKE: Right. And the final thing is to think about our research and evaluate it.

卢克：对。最后一件事是思考我们的研究并对其进行评估。

So that seems quite straightforward.

所以这看起来很简单。

SUSIE: Yeah. So now let's …

苏西：是的。所以现在让我们…