PONE-D-20-29576

Eye-head coordination and dynamic visual scanning as indicators of visuo-cognitive demands in driving simulator

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mikula,

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Feng Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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[This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, NSERC – Essilor Industrial Research Chair (IRCPJ 305729-13), Research and development cooperatif NSERC – Essilor Grant (CRDPJ 533187 - 2018), Prompt (https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/index_eng.asp & https://www.essilor.ca). The funders provided support in the form of salary for author DB but had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Authors LM and AP received support from student awards from the Road Safety Research Network (Réseau de Recherche en Sécurité Routière) of Québec (https://rrsr.ca/en).].

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Generally, the manuscript is well written. However, revisions are required before acceptance.

1. In the experiment, participants were asked to wear contact lenses with varying degrees of defocusing to achieve visual degradation. The manuscript did not specify the extent to which they affected the increase in drivers' visual demands. No significant difference between the low-degradation and high-degradation groups was observed in the study, assuming that the participants could compensate to some extent. This is not rigorous; is there more detail.

2. 21 participants were selected for the experiment. The degree of astigmatism and other factors also have an impact on the experimental results, such as affecting the anchoring of eye tracker, which was not considered in the experiment.

3. The minimum gaze duration of the eye is 120 ms, therefore, eye and gaze data were divided into time bins of 120 ms. However, whether it is reasonable to divide the head movement data into a time bins of 800 ms? There's no basis here. And the coupling between data is questionable. In the discussion section of experimental results, it is found that drivers focus on the road ahead, assuming that they complete the auxiliary tasks faster than expected, which is lack of experimental verification. Therefore, there should be rigorous consideration in this aspect, which is also helpful for analysis.

4. According to the density distribution of the yaw/pitch Angle data of the driver's head, eyes and gaze, it is not precise enough to infer the location of the driver's gaze, which is two-dimensional. Different drivers test at different locations of the equipment, that is, there is a big difference in the original position in the spatial coordinate system, there is an individual difference in the projected position in front of them.

Reviewer #2: The topic is worthy of investigating and the conclusion is useful. The paper is overall well written and structured. There is one minor requested revision to the current paper, there literature review should be exhaustive and include the following driving simulator related studies:

[1] Examining the safety of trucks under crosswind at bridge-tunnel section: A driving simulator study, Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 2019, 92, 103034. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tust.2019.103034

[2] Examining the influence of decorated sidewaall in road tunnels using fMRI technology, Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, Volume 99, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tust.2020.103362

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Eye-head coordination and dynamic visual scanning as indicators of visuo-cognitive demands in driving simulator

PONE-D-20-29576R1

Dear Dr. Mikula,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Feng Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. 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: 1. The author can further establish a reasonable evaluation system based on existing research, such as how to judge whether the person being tested is distracted through observational data

2. How to discriminate between safe and unsafe behaviors during these complex and demanding tasks.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. 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

Reviewer #2: No