Auditory and visual mental imagery in musicians and non-musicians

Mental imagery plays an important role in various contexts of life, involving cognitive resources such as memory, learning, spatial representation, and reasoning. The vividness of mental images depends on different factors, including personal expertise in a certain field. For instance, musicians have been found to possess better auditory imagery abilities than non-musicians for both musical and non-musical sounds. Only a few studies have tried to find out if this advantage is selective for auditory stimuli, however, with contradictory results so far (i.e., some studies supporting an advantage for mental imagery in general and some supporting an advantage for auditory mental imagery in particular). This study therefore investigated auditory and visual mental imagery in individuals with and without formal musical training. Thirty-six formally trained musicians, 33 self-taught musicians, and 33 non-musicians completed two questionnaires assessing the vividness of their auditory and visual mental imagery. They also completed measures of aptitude for music and general cognitive abilities. Both groups of musicians reported greater vividness of auditory (non-musical) imagery, but not visual imagery, than non-musicians. Thus musical experience, regardless of the type of training undergone by musicians, is linked to superior self-reported auditory mental imagery for everyday sounds, but not mental imagery in general.