Traffic Jams: Music and Traffic Noise Interact to Influence the Vividness, Sentiment, and Spatiotemporal Properties of Directed Mental Imagery

Abstract

Music and traffic noise are nearly ubiquitous components of our modern auditory landscape. However, much remains unknown on how they interact in influencing higher-order cognitive processes such as mental imagery. Understanding this influence is important because music is a candidate to support mental imagery-based therapies, and traffic noise is often unavoidable in urban environments. Here, 107 participants performed a directed mental imagery task of imagining the continuation of a journey towards a landmark. Each trial had either silence, traffic noise, music, or combined music and noise. Bayesian Mixed Effects models reveal that compared to silence, participants reported enhanced imagery vividness for music in all conditions. Only music increased positive emotional sentiment of the imagined content, and adding noise to music diminished the effect. The auditory landscape further shaped the physical properties of the imagined content; both music and traffic affected the imagined distances travelled, but only music affected the imagined time travelled. Furthermore, elevated traffic-related themes occurred in both conditions involving traffic noise. Overall, both music and noise can modulate aspects of mental imagery and interact in complex ways to reveal dissociations between imagery components. We discuss practical implications for applied contexts, such as imagery-based therapies.