Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionSeptember 23, 2019 |
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PONE-D-19-26775 Self-controlled practice and nudging during structural learning of a novel control interface PLOS ONE Dear Dr Lee, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. As the handling academic editor, I thoroughly apologize for the delay in providing a response to your submission. Unfortunately, I was assigned the manuscript late in December and it proved to be exceedingly hard to find expert reviewers for this submission at this point in time. To avoid further delays, I am making my decision on the report of an expert in this area of investigation. The reviewer has several concerns that I agree with but I would like to give you the opportunity to reply to my and the reviewer's comments and criticisms. I will ask for the reviewer's opinion on your re-submission, should you choose to submit one. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Apr 02 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Welber Marinovic Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (if provided): It was not clear to me how the difficulty of the targets was equated in the nudge group. As I understand, the targets were made bigger or smaller by 25%, that choice was based on participant’s performance at pre-test or mid-test. This number (25%) seems rather arbitrary: was the error in average 25% larger for the most difficult target? The discussion does mention this issue but a stronger case could be built by collecting data for another study using the method described in the discussion. Some of the conclusions rely on the lack of statistical significance. I would recommend using either a parametric test of equivalence (e.g., Toster by Lakens) or providing Bayes Factors. Since you are using JASP, I would think it should be very easy to determine the strength of the null hypothesis. Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 4 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: # General comments The experiment aimed to investigate whether a practice condition controlled by the learner promotes benefits for a specific case of learning (structural learning). An experimenter imposed random practice schedule served as a control group for two self-controlled groups, one without and another with “nudge”. “Nudging” in the sensorimotor task used by the authors consisted of displaying larger targets in positions identified to be more difficult for the learners to “reach” (by controlling a virtual cursor). The introduction presents the problem clearly and the Method contains all information necessary to understand the experimental task and procedures. The statistical analysis is adequate and presented in detail, as is the results section. Nevertheless, I have some concerns related to the discussion of the findings. The crucial aspect for me is that the “random practice” condition does not allow to control for the effects of the learners autonomy (which is a limitation addressed by the authors in the discussion) and, most critical, this practice condition does not control for the effects of practice organization. Specifically, the practice organization “produced” by each learner as a result of their decision making during practice does not compare to the pseudo random practice performed by the random group. This aspect is critical because it changes important interpretations presented in the discussion. # Specific points: “A feature of self-controlled learning that may be problematic here is that although it may benefit autonomy, it typically reduces the random structure of practice because participants tend to engage in more ‘blocked’ practice by repeating targets (24).” “In the context of structural learning, self-controlled practice may create a potential tradeoff - participants may tend to focus excessively on improving performance on the training targets (as indicated by the increased repetition and avoidance of the difficult targets in the Strategy analyses), however, this focus on short-term performance may result in more ‘blocked’ practice, which could negate some of the other benefits of self-controlled practice.” I recommend that the authors search the literature concerning this point, since there is evidence showing that this behavior actually depends on the instruction provided (i.e. participants only “tend to engage in more ‘blocked’ practice” in the absence of instructions beyond the ones describing the task goal). ---- “The goal of the study was to address the role of self-controlled practice in a structural learning task.” I suggest rephrasing “structural learning task”, because the ambiguity may suggest that “structural learning” refers to an attribute of the task. ---- “One trivial possibility for these non-significant results is simply that any potential differences between groups was eliminated by a ‘floor effect’ in terms of the performance – i.e. movement times had reduced to a minimum possible limit by the end of training. However, we consider this unlikely as an explanation since the mid-tests (which were done in the middle of the training session) also showed the same patterns as the post-test.” This argument is not clear to me. I would recommend rewriting it. ---- “Approaches such as ‘restricted’ self-control, where participants face a mix of self-controlled and experimenter-imposed conditions may provide the optimal learning environment in such cases (8)” The task used in the cited study (8) was not similar to the one employed in the study under review. Considering the amount of studies investigating self-controlled sensorimotor learning not included in their paper - which, I thought, were not included because of the specificities of their task* -, the criteria used by the authors to select which research to cite is sometimes unclear. * “...these have been primarily used in rather well-learned tasks (such as key pressing or throwing) where the underlying schema may already be present through prior experience. In contrast, our focus in this study was to use a novel virtual task where the structure could only be learned through practice.” ---- “One reason for this null result might be that we only evaluated target difficulty twice during the entire practice schedule - at the onset of practice and at the halfway mark (i.e. at the pre-test and mid-test). A more frequent update of task difficulty (e.g., once per training block) may have been more effective to ensure that participants were practicing on the most difficult target for them at that time.” This would mean that any conclusions concerning "nudging" would be inappropriate, since the method did not allowed the adequate manipulation of the independent variable. If I'm mistaken, maybe the argument needs some adjustments. ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-19-26775R1 Self-controlled practice and nudging during structural learning of a novel control interface PLOS ONE Dear Dr Lee, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, I believe the paper can be accepted but there is one point that I would appreciate if the authors could check before I make a final decision. Therefore, I invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addressing the point raised below. ============================== Unfortunately, due to an illness, the reviewer who provided comments on the original submission could not assess your rebuttal letter. Rather than seeking another reviewer, I took on the responsibility of assessing your answers myself. I think for the most part they are fine and I would have no further concerns. With regards to one point made by the Reviewer about instructions, I wondered whether she was referring to knowledge about the testing conditions. A few years back, I published a paper with colleagues showing that knowledge of how testing would occur after practice affects how they organized practice, improving learning (DOI: 10.1016/j.humov.2012.11.008). I honestly don’t know if the reviewer had this type of work on mind or something else, but if you find it relevant to your discussion then you may want to consider that work. Of course, citing it or not has no impact on the paper’s acceptance and the authors are free to ignore this suggestion if they believe it doesn’t tackle the reviewer’s concern or doesn’t improve the paper's narrative. I will be ready to make a quick decision upon receiving your revised manuscript. ============================== We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by May 01 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Welber Marinovic Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 2 |
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Self-controlled practice and nudging during structural learning of a novel control interface PONE-D-19-26775R2 Dear Dr. Lee, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. With kind regards, Welber Marinovic Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-19-26775R2 Self-controlled practice and nudging during structural learning of a novel control interface Dear Dr. Lee: I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE. With kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Welber Marinovic Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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