Traffic jams: music and traffic noise interact to influence the vividness, sentiment, and spatiotemporal properties of directed mental imagery

Music and traffic noise are pervasive elements of modern everyday auditory environments. However, their combined effects on higher-order cognitive processes like mental imagery remain unclear. In a directed mental imagery task, 107 participants continued imaginary journeys towards a landmark, responded to prompts about each journey, and provided written descriptions. Each trial had either silence, traffic noise, music, or combined music and noise. Bayesian Mixed-Effects models revealed that compared to silence, music enhanced imagery vividness and emotional sentiment; traffic noise enhanced vividness but not sentiment; and noise combined with music diminished music’s effect on emotional sentiment. The auditory context further shaped the physical properties of the imagined content: both music and traffic noise increased the imagined distances travelled, whereas only music extended 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, influencing its vividness, emotional tone, spatiotemporal properties, and thematic content in complex ways. We discuss the practical implications of these findings for imagery-based therapies.