Read the following essay and determine the author’s purpose. Sleeping Scared 1 Sleep researchers say that nightmares are a universal experience, and people from all cultures report the experience of being jolted out of sleep by a terrifying dream that seemed all too real. In sleep research labs where people are periodically woken out of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, three-quarters of those wakened report being in the middle of a bad dream. In other words, nightmares are a common occurrence, more common than many of us realize. Ask someone to recall how many bad dreams they had over the course of the year and the person will report one or two. But tell them to keep a dream diary and the picture changes with the diarist reporting nightmares once or twice a month. 2 While bad dreams may be common across cultures, researchers say that they do vary according to age and gender. Preschoolers, for instance, report very few nightmares. But that changes with their arrival in kindergarten, at which point bad dreams become more common. Around a quarter of all children between the ages of five and twelve report having nightmares. 3 Nightmare rates really start to climb in adolescence. They peak in young adulthood and then begin dropping. The average fifty-five-year-old has far fewer nightmares than the average twenty-five-year-old. 4 At nearly every age, females report having more nightmares than males do. They are also more likely to be awakened by the intensity of their nightmares, which, in one study at least, focused heavily on the dreamer being chased and having her life threatened. Men’s bad dreams were slightly different in that they were more concerned with the dreamer being trapped in an unpleasant situation and forced to fight his way free. ( Source of study: www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/4-2levin.htm. )