Speech-in-noise identification ability was comparable for both groups of participants. In line with incidence rates reported in the literature, 74% of our participants reported having heard tinnitus-like sounds in the anechoic room. The internal consistency of the questionnaires used was verified in our study sample and ranged between α = 0.61 and α = 0.90. They were also asked to fill-out standardized questionnaires measuring anxiety (State–Trait Anxiety Inventory), affect (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) and noise sensitivity (Weinstein Noise Sensitivity Scale). Participants were asked whether they perceived sounds during their stay in the room and rated the perceptual qualities of sound percepts (loudness and unpleasantness). Participants in the threat condition were deceived about their hearing and were led to believe that staying in the room would potentially harm their hearing temporarily. Prior to a four-minute stay in an anechoic room, we randomized participants block design-wise in a threat ( N = 37) and no-threat condition ( N = 41). Their hearing was evaluated using gold-standard pure tone audiometry and a speech-in-noise self-test (Digit Triplet Test), which is a sensitive screening test to identify subclinical hearing loss.
In general, the study sample consisted of young, mostly female, university students. In total, N = 78 normal-hearing volunteers participated in this study. We hypothesized that participants who experience a higher level of threat would direct their attention more to the auditory system, leading to the perception of tinnitus-like sounds, which would otherwise be subaudible, and that under conditions of increased threat, narrowing of attention would lead to perceptual distortions. We investigated the potential role of individual differences in anxiety, negative affect, noise sensitivity and subclinical hearing loss. 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. In an environment of absolute silence, researchers have found many of their participants to perceive phantom sounds (tinnitus). Concomitant auditory attention plays an important role on the emergence of tinnitus.
Tinnitus-like perceptions may occur in a nonclinical population in a silent environment. Of the participants, 19.7% experienced tinnitus during Hanoi, 45.5% during visual attention, and 68.2% during auditory attention experiment, with no significant differences for studied variables. No sound or light change was given at any moment. After each experiment, participants were asked about their auditory and visual perception. Two deviated attention from auditory system (Hanoi and visual attention experiments), and 1 drove attention to the auditory system (auditory attention). While sitting in a sound booth, 66 volunteers (age range, 18-65 mean age, 37.3) performed 3 experiments of 5 minutes each, consecutively and randomly presented. The purpose of this study was to study the effect of attention and sustained silence on the emergence of auditory phantom perception in normal-hearing adults.
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