Effect of Visual Information Presented on a Cellphone on Subjective Evaluation of Boat Noise

We investigated the effect of visual information on the perception of sound for development of a cellphone application to reduce the impression of noise. The noisiness of loud sound is decreased by visual information about the noise source, but there has been little discussion of the presentation size. We investigated how screen size mediates the effect of visual information on the noisiness of a moving boat. We compared the noisiness of an audio-only stimulus and an audiovisual stimulus. A 4.7-in. cellphone screen decreased the noisiness more effectively than a 4-in. screen. The visibility of the noise source affected the reduction of noisiness.