Final answer:
Children's dreams being more like a slide show illustrates the 'manifest content' of their dreams, indicating a developmental stage in which the brain and cognitive understanding are still maturing. Freud's theory considered these as insights into the unconscious, while Cartwright and Hobson provide empirical and neurobiological explanations for dreams aligning with cognitive and life events.
Step-by-step explanation:
Prior to age 9, children's dreams are more akin to a slide show rather than an active story with the dreamer as a participant. This observation illustrates that the content of dreams can reflect children's cognitive development and understanding of the world, as well as the workings of their unconscious mind. When considering the options 'manifest content' and 'night terrors,' the more accurate term to describe children's dreams in this scenario is 'manifest content', which refers to the actual storyline and events of a dream.
Sigmund Freud believed that the 'manifest content' of dreams provided clues to the individual's unconscious mind. This traditional view proposes that dreams can help increase self-awareness and address life's problems. However, criticisms of Freud's perspective suggest that dreams may not have a singular, decipherable meaning, and that his theory lacks empirical support. In contrast, Carl Jung theorized that dreams access the collective unconscious and serve as cultural and universal symbols.
Rosalind Cartwright's empirical research offers a more scientific approach, indicating that dreams reflect significant life events and personal preoccupations. Alan Hobson's activation-synthesis theory of dreaming considers dreams as the brain's attempt to make sense of neural activity during REM sleep, supporting a more biological basis for dream content. Dreams can be seen as a construction of virtual reality, which might serve a functional purpose during wakefulness. Therefore, the development of children's dreams from a 'slide show' to an active narrative could indicate a maturation of cognitive and neural functioning as they age.