Fear influences phantom sound percepts in an anechoic room.

Aims And Hypotheses: In an environment of absolute silence, researchers have found many of their participants to perceive phantom sounds (tinnitus). With this between-subject experiment, we aimed to elaborate on these research findings, and specifically investigated whether-in line with the fear-avoidance model of tinnitus perception and reactivity-fear or level of perceived threat influences the incidence and perceptual qualities of phantom sound percepts in an anechoic room. We investigated the potential role of individual differences in anxiety, negative affect, noise sensitivity and subclinical hearing loss.