Music promotes vivid mental imagination, while traffic noise alters the direction of the mind.

A new study shows that music and traffic noise don’t just fill the background. They can reshape how vividly, emotionally, and even how far and how fast people imagine moving in a scene.

Study: Traffic jams: Music and traffic noise interact to influence the vividness, emotion, and spatio-temporal qualities of guided mental imagery.. Image Credit: Nicoletta Ionescu/Shutterstock

In a recent study published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences CommunicationThe researchers evaluated how traffic noise, music, and their combination affect perceived emotion and vividness as well as the spatio-temporal properties of directed mental imagery.

Mental imagination differs from true perception and is a primary component of everyday cognitive abilities, such as language comprehension, self-regulation, memory, future planning, and decision making. Directed mental imagery refers to deliberate, goal-directed mental imagery, usually aimed at achieving a goal, while undirected mental imagery is similar to mind wandering.

Music can effectively control imagery characteristics. This can, on average, substantially increase the vividness of the imagination and increase positive emotional feeling. It may also change the nature and content of mental imagery. While music can influence mental imagery characteristics, the effects of other auditory stimuli, such as noise, particularly traffic noise, are less well studied in guided mental imagery tasks.

about the study

In the present study, researchers evaluated the effects of music, traffic noise, and their combination on the vividness and emotion of guided mental imagery, along with an exploratory measure of imagined time, distance, and imagined speed. Participants were undergraduate students at an Australian university. Auditory stimuli included three musical pieces and four traffic noise samples. Subjects heard only the first 105 seconds of each musical piece.

The traffic noise clip was a low-variety city noise stimulus, consisting of continuous, subtle traffic flow, car horns, and combustion engines. The six-minute traffic noise clip was divided into four 105-second segments. In the combined music-traffic noise setting, the music was set to be louder than the noise. Specifically, the noise was 15 dB softer than the music.

Participants first watched a visual stimulus, a 15-second video of the opening sequence of a video game. The clip shows a figure climbing a hill, with an indistinct landmark visible at a great distance from its summit. After viewing the visual stimulus, participants were asked to close their eyes and imagine a figure walking toward a landmark. This mental imagery task lasted 90 seconds, with a gong sound indicating the start and end.

Subjects listened to music, noise, music and traffic noise, or silence from the beginning of the visual stimulus until the end of the task. Next, they completed six questions to measure imaginary distance, time, and vividness. The above procedure was repeated for each condition in eight trials. The National Language Tool Kit and the Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning Model were used to assess hypothetical sentiment.

conclusion

The study involved 107 participants, including 23 men and 84 women aged 17-50. Participants reported more vivid imagery in all conditions compared to the silent condition. Liveliness was comparable between traffic noise, music, and music-traffic noise conditions. Specifically, the music and music-traffic noise conditions produced more positive emotion in the imagined content than silence. Perceived content emotion was comparable between traffic noise and silent conditions.

The music-traffic noise and music conditions evoked more positively imagined content than the traffic noise condition. The music condition also showed more positively imagined content than the music-traffic noise condition, suggesting that adding traffic noise reduced the positive emotional impact of the music. Perceived travel time in the music and music-traffic noise conditions was longer than in the silence and traffic noise conditions. Consistently, imagined travel time was longer in the music condition than in the music-traffic noise condition.

Furthermore, perceived travel distance was greater in all conditions compared to silence. However, the music and music-traffic noise conditions resulted in greater perceived distances than the traffic noise condition, and they were comparable to each other. Notably, perceived speed was higher in the traffic and music-traffic noise conditions compared to silence. There was no evidence that perceived speed differed between the musical and silent conditions.

Perceived speed was slower in the music condition than in the traffic noise and music-traffic noise conditions. The probability of imagining traffic-related content was comparable between the music and silent conditions. However, the probability in the traffic noise and music-traffic noise condition was higher than in the silence-and-music condition.

Participants imagined more traffic-related content in the traffic noise condition than in the music-traffic noise condition. However, this traffic-content analysis was exploratory rather than part of the main pre-registered hypotheses.

conclusion

In brief, the study explored whether traffic noise, music, or their combination affects characteristics of emotional feeling, vividness, imaginary distance, and imaginary time in a guided mental imagery task. Results showed that music increased vividness, imaginary time, imaginary distance, and positive emotion compared to silence.

Traffic noise had a similar effect on vividness but less effect on emotional emotion, imaginary distance, and imaginary time, increasing vividness and distance but not on positive emotion or imaginary time.

The combined music-traffic noise condition reduced the effects on emotion, without affecting imaginary distance, vividness, or imaginary time. Specifically, traffic noise increased the speed of imagination and this was also reflected in the content of participants’ imagination, highlighting its impact on mental imagery.

These results suggest that the auditory environment, including background noise, may shape different aspects of mental imagery in different ways, rather than enhancing them equally.

The authors also noted potential relevance to imagery-based therapeutic settings, while cautioning that the online design, participants’ own listening devices, the specific sound samples used, and the youth university-based sample may limit generalizability.