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Urban noise, particularly road traffic noise, negatively affects physiological and psychological health. This study provides novel evidence on how road traffic noise impacts attention, concentration, memory, and verbal fluency. Sixty-one undergraduate students (34 females, 27 males) completed a brief interview and cognitive tasks under two conditions: with experimental traffic noise (ETN) and without (NEN). To control for order effects, half began with ETN, half with NEN.Results showed males outperformed females in visual detection and auditory verbal memory. A significant main effect of treatment order was found in memory performance, with order 2 (NEN first) achieving higher scores than order 1 (ETN first). Significant sex × treatment order interactions were observed in memory (third repetition) and semantic verbal fluency, indicating that noise exposure sequence differentially affects cognition by sex. A significant main effect of treatment was also observed in semantic verbal fluency, with better performance under ETN than NEN.