I found that article confusing. It seemed to say that the people being tested picked the winner better if they didn't hear the sound. I'm still not sure what that means.
Does it mean that the judges were more influenced by the visuals than the audio? Thus those in the experiment got closer to the minds of the judges by discarding the sound? That they got it right a third of the time with sound and visual, doesn't mean anything to me - it's not as if the judges are objective evaluators.
I can't see that this study means people are more influenced by visual. It shows the judges of the competition were in the same boat as the testees - it was sheer chance who won. Then it shows that without sound people evaluated expression, not music. That they got closer to the choice of the judges, can only mean the judges consciously placed more importance on expression than sound, which is quite likely - they are often given a score sheet to help them decide, where as the testees were just told which one was best.
Any conclusions of such a study are very open to question.
If I watch a musician with the sound off, I am evaluating their skill in mime, not music. To me, public performance is about entertainment, including both music and visual. Not all musicians are entertainers. But stepping away from those populist words like passion and motivation, which have become a big fashion of late, I do include in my appreciation of an audio-visual performance, public or private, the quality of becoming a perfect channel for the music. I don't like seeing a musician 'lost' in the music, but I do like to see them fully into it.