【英语时差8,16】时间在睡梦中是怎样流逝的？

Many people believe that hours' worth of events and activities can be dreamed about in a matter seconds. Despite this common belief about how we dream, time in dreams actually is not compressed. If you dream of an activity that would take five minutes in waking life, you probably dream about it for a full five minutes. Dream and sleep researcher William Dement conducted two studies that demonstrated that dream time was similar to real time. Because dreamers' eyes move under their eyelids¹ very rapidly while they are dreaming, Dement was able to monitor sleepers² and record the length of their dreams by observing their rapid eye movement. After recording³ this information, Dement would wake dreamers and have them write down a description of their most recent dream. He assumed that longer dreams would take more words to describe than shorter ones. When he compared the number of words in each dream report with the number of minutes the dream had occurred, he found that the longer the dream, the more words the dreamer used to describe it. In another related experiment, Dement woke sleepers while they were dreaming and asked them how long they perceived their most recent dream had taken. Eighty-three percent of the time they perceived correctly whether their dreams had been going on for a long time or for a short time. With these experiments, Dement concluded that time in dreams is nearly identical to time in waking life. So the next time in your dreams you slay⁴ a dragon or fly from your house to your workplace, the amount of time it seemed to take is probably just about how long it actually took to dream it.

1 eyelids   

n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色

参考例句：

• She was so tired, her eyelids were beginning to droop. 她太疲倦了，眼睑开始往下垂。
• Her eyelids drooped as if she were on the verge of sleep. 她眼睑低垂好像快要睡着的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 sleepers   

n.卧铺（通常以复数形式出现）；卧车( sleeper的名词复数 )；轨枕；睡觉（呈某种状态）的人；小耳环

参考例句：

• He trod quietly so as not to disturb the sleepers. 他轻移脚步，以免吵醒睡着的人。 来自辞典例句
• The nurse was out, and we two sleepers were alone. 保姆出去了，只剩下我们两个瞌睡虫。 来自辞典例句

3 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

4 slay   

v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮

参考例句：

• He intended to slay his father's murderer.他意图杀死杀父仇人。
• She has ordered me to slay you.她命令我把你杀了。