https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8249-5961
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionAugust 15, 2019 |
|---|
|
PONE-D-19-23077 Word learning from a tablet app: 30-month-olds perform better in a passive context PLOS ONE Dear Ms. Ackermann, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE and apologies for the delay in sending the editorial decision – this was due to the need to invite additional reviewer because the initial reviewers were unable to complete their reviews. 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. Two reviewers. who are both experts in the field of children’s technologically assisted learning, agree – and I concur – that your study is timely and addresses a very important topic. However, both reviewers express concerns with respect to how your findings are to be interpreted. I therefore think that in the present form, your study raises more questions than it answers and cannot stand on its own without further investigation. As indicated by Reviewer 1, there are different aspects to active learning making a stronger theoretical justification of the particular choice of activity (tapping to select items for learning) implemented here necessary. Furthermore, speculation about what underpins the benefit observed in the passive group needs be constrained through further investigation, as Reviewer 1 points out. Which aspects of your study are germane to active learning and which ones are artefacts of the methodology? In the Discussion, you mention a range of explanations for why tapping may have caused a detrimental effect in the active group (draining resources, having dual function of indicating preference vs. comprehension, prepotent behaviour). Both reviewers also identify other confounds such as potential differences in the pragmatics of the instruction, and differences in the degree of novelty and function of tapping between groups that should be ruled out in a second experiment. Although I fully appreciate the practical problems associated with testing small children I also share Reviewer 1’s concern about the limited sample size, especially given the amount of fixed effects in your models. In addition to this, further information and possible revision of the statistical models is required (e.g. Did you use a logit link function for the accuracy data? Did you include random slopes [i.e. a maximal random effect structure] and if not why not?) In short, a major revision should involve one or several further experiments to clarify further what accounts for the inferior performance of the active group. Such a revision should also address all the other concerns expressed by the reviewers. 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, Vera Kempe Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 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 [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 Reviewer #2: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: No ********** 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 ********** 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: The authors sought to investigate the effects of interactive features of child-directed tablet apps on 30-month-olds’ word-learning outcomes. Following up on previous work, the authors aimed at evaluating the effects of interactive features while minimizing the confounding effects of stimuli presentation order that could have affected the outcomes of the earlier research. The authors employed a yoked design, in which each pair of age-matched participants was exposed to the same order and duration of stimuli presentation (set by the active condition participants). Consistent with the authors’ predictions, the analyses show a main effect of condition on toddlers’ accuracy on the test trials, suggesting that the interactive features of the app did not facilitate but rather interfered with toddler’s word learning. The authors speculate that this effect could have been caused by the novelty of the tapping action or children’s misinterpretation of the test trials as asking to declare their preference rather that testing their knowledge of words. My overall impression is that this is an interesting paper that potentially makes a valuable contribution to the literature on children’s ability to learn from mobile and tablet apps. Such knowledge can be of value both to the research community and to parents. However, before this work becomes ready for publication, I recommend that the authors make significant changes to the manuscript addressing the concerns outlined below. I would also prefer to see the authors conduct a follow-up study exploring the possibilities they mention in the Discussion. It is indeed possible that the observed results were driven by the novelty of the tapping action or children’s misinterpretation of the task. I think that a study that tests these conjectures would strengthen the authors’ claim and provide additional information about the factors driving children’s learning from interactive tablet apps. Specific concerns and other comments: Line 25-26: Either “by” or “due” for both alternatives would sound better Line 28: that’s a “yoked” design, correct? Perhaps mention this to orient the reader Broad comment: I think that a distinction should be made between different types of “active” learning. One way to make an app more interactive is by delegating the choice of an image to be labelled to the player. Another way is by introducing an element of (pseudo) socially contingent exchange (e.g., voice feedback to the child’s actions, or a video of a speaker reacting to such actions). There might be differences in learning outcomes, depending on how the “active” learning component is implemented. I suggest including this point in the GD. Line 63: I see that the idea is to see whether any sort of contingent feedback would work (given that a manipulation of this sort showed an effect before), but I would still suggest mentioning the difference between social and non-social feedback Line 80: the SES effect does not seem particularly relevant to the narrative; I suggest either dropping this line or explaining the relevance of this finding (e.g., lower-SES children may have a different pattern of attention distribution, or different access to tablet devices, or something else). Lines 77-83: No need to cite again, it’s clear that the same study is being referenced throughout the paragraph (same goes to other paragraphs). General suggestion about the intro: I think the authors are trying to be careful and diligent with citing earlier research but it’s making the intro excessively long. I suggest that many non-critical details about earlier studies can be dropped. Line 114: It’s better to keep the labeling of conditions consistent. In the abstract the children in the “yoked” condition are referred to as “passive” participants (also, see Line 123). I suggest mentioning that a yoked design was used and then refer to the conditions as “active” and “passive” respectively. Lines 121-122: What is the prediction for the active group? Line 140: It would be nice to cite some vocabulary development norms. I am sure that most 30-month-olds know the names of all objects used in the study, but it would be better to rely on some formal evidence. Line 143: It would be good to see a brief description of such phonotactic constraints. Perhaps, in an Appendix? Line 164: Did all children stay engaged with the app the entire time? If not, then the differences in the level of engagement between the active and the passive participants should be mentioned (e.g., the passive participants could have found the game less fun and looked away more often). Line 180: N of participants on the pilot trials? Line 183: Please include the carrier phrase used Line 191: Remove the superscript in “was”? Line 208: How many outliers were there in each condition? Any age-related patterns? Line 220: It seems to be a lot of variables for a sample of 34 children (the same goes to the analyses of accuracy), I wonder if it would make more sense to run preliminary analyses for variables such as age, gender, and trial order and to only include the variables that do show significant effects to the subsequent analyses. Also, I am not sure why gender but not age is included as a variable. The authors talked about the significance of age for children’s ability to benefit from interactive apps and did not highlight the role of gender. Perhaps, it would make sense to split the sample by age (i.e., “younger half” & “older half”) and test this effect instead of gender. Line 287: I agree. I wonder if it would make sense to run a follow-up, in which children are given some practice for ~7 days prior to the study so that they do not have to master a new skill along with learning or be too carried away with the thrill of tapping on the screen. Line 299: It reads as though the children were the ones who did not find the effect of condition. Consider rephrasing (e.g., “Despite . . . , we observed that . . .”). Reviewer #2: The authors conducted an experimental study to examine the impact of interactivity on toddlers’ (N = 34; 28-36 months) word learning from video. Children were assigned to either actively choose objects that they want to learn labels (active condition) or be exposed to the same labels selected by children in the active condition (passive condition) during the 4 learning trials. Following the 6 familiarization trials where both groups were allowed to interact with the screen, children’s reaction time and accuracy of word learning was measured using 2 and 4 alternative force choice tests (AFC, 12 and 8 trials, respectively). Results showed a significant condition difference in the 2-AFC test phase and a significant condition x order interaction in the 4-AFC test phase. There was no-significant condition effect on reaction time. The authors interpreted the results as evidence to support the adverse effect of interactivity on word learning from video. Given the prevalence of interactive mobile media in the lives of very young children, it is important to understand the impact of interactivity on learning from screen media. I agree with the authors that there is a need to systematically examine children’s active learning in the context of interactive digital media, particularly in infancy and toddlerhood, as this age groups have shown to be susceptible to video deficit effects. While prior work has examined the impact of either socially adaptive or physically contingent interaction with screens, it remains an open question as to whether the active selection of information benefits toddlers' learning from screens. The authors’ study is addressing this gap in the field by asking children not only to interact with video but also to “choose” what to learn. Having said that, I think the study needs further justification or clarification regarding potential confounding factors (prompt, familiarization trial). First, in the active condition, the prompt was given as a form of “instruction” (i.e., "Look, here are two pictures. You can tap on one", "Tap on an object, then you’ll hear its name"). On the other hand, in the passive condition, the prompt was given as a form of “question” (i.e., “Do you see the two pictures? Are they beautiful?”). Existing evidence suggests that toddlers appear to utilize social cues such as referential intent of speakers for word learning (Bloom, 2000; Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2006). For example, Luchkina, Sobel, & Morgan (2016) showed that 18-month-olds are sensitive to the difference between making statements and asking questions in learning novel labels. Research with preschoolers has shown that explicit instruction might help immediate learning but limit further exploration compared to pedagogical questioning (Bonawitz et al., 2011; Jean et al., 2019). I think further justification is required to conclude that the difference in word learning is due to interactivity rather than the difference in children’s inference of speaker intentions. Second, both active and passive groups were allowed to interact with the screen during the familiarization phase, which occurred right before the 2 and 4- AFC testing phases. Thus, it is not yet clear whether the active group’s lower performance in testing was due to their active selection during learning or the relatively higher frequencies of the overall physical interactions with the screen. The active group was expected to utilize two functions of tapping: selecting what to learn during learning and providing correct answers during testing. On the other hand, the passive group use tapping mainly to choose their answers during testing. This difference might have contributed to different levels of cognitive loads between the two conditions. In other words, interactivity during the familiarization phase might have benefited the passive group through the goldilocks of interactivity – not too much and not too little but just right – to prepare children to choose correct answers. I think the authors should address this point in the manuscript. Although the authors discussed the findings based on cognitive resources available during encoding and prepotent motor responses in the discussion section, it was not clear to me how they interpreted the interactions available for both conditions during the familiarization phase. ********** 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 Reviewer #2: 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 |
|
PONE-D-19-23077R1 Word learning from a tablet app: Toddlers perform better in a passive context PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ackermann, Thank you for submitting the revised version of your manuscript and for making the effort to gather additional data. I was able to solicit reviews from the same reviewers who reviewed the original submission. Both reviewers are pleased to see how you have taken on board their suggestions, and they both provide further recommendations for how to improve the clarity of the paper. In addition, my reading of your revisions leads me to query some aspects of data presentation and to make some suggestions of my own designed to make sure that the data are presented in a way that can withstand careful scrutiny from readers. I trust that the Reviewers’ and my suggestions can be addressed, mainly by revisiting the analyses and figures, and am therefore requesting just a Minor Review. Experiment 1: 1. You provide the structure of your models which is very helpful but there is no justification for why you decided to omit the random slopes from the models. The random slopes of Age are especially important in the Familiarisation phase were children are presented with real words and their knowledge of these may differ across age groups. If you tried the maximal random effect structure and the models did not converge then please state so explicitly. 2. Unfortunately, it is difficult to appreciate the effects of Condition and Age because your figures do not correspond to the models as they report the data split by Trial Number. As a result, the main effects and interactions are not clear from the figures. As requested by Reviewer 1, please provide figures that show the aggregate effect of Condition and Age for each experimental stage and dependent variable – a format that depicts not just measures of central tendency and variability but also the shape of the distribution such as violin or raincloud plots would be most informative but this is merely a suggestion. When addressing the dynamics of performance over time in your text (e.g. by referring to early vs. later trials) the current figures can be referred to in an Appendix or Supplementary Materials. 3. My last point is potentially serious unless I misunderstood your reporting (in which case I apologise): I wasn’t sure whether you are reporting the correct reference category. For example, in the RT model, if in the Familiarity phase children in the Active condition were faster as you suggest in line 228, and Passive was the reference condition, I would expect the slope estimate (beta) to be negative. Similarly, for 2AFC RTs, if passive children were faster and Passive is the reference category then beta should be positive if the active children were slower. A similar discrepancy arises in the Accuracy analyses. Please check whether the reference category corresponds to the reported direction of effects. Also, please clarify whether you are using sum or treatment coding as this has implications for interpreting the intercept. My big concern is that if Passive was indeed the reference category then your models show exactly the opposite of what you claim. Experiment 2: 1. Similarly, as requested for Experiment 1, please provide a graph for the learning phase with overall fixation proportions that illustrate the main effect mentioned in lines 443/444, i.e. something similar to Figure 7. 2. For the mixed-effect models, you state that you used sum-coding. Was sum coding also used for the RT and accuracy analyses in Experiment 1? Please clarify. Again, there is confusion with the estimates: if Passive is the reference category then a positive beta for Condition (e.g. 0.219 for 2AFC) would suggest accuracy is higher in the active group? This is not what Figure 10 suggests so is it possible that Active was the reference category? Again, this may have serious implications for your results so I hope that your reporting of the reference category was just a simple error and Active is the reference category (this is likely because lme4 takes the category that comes first in the alphabet as reference category unless specified otherwise). Please check and clarify. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 19 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Vera Kempe Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ********** 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: Partly 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 ********** 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 ********** 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: This is a substantially improved manuscript. I am pleased to see the reorganization of the intro, the much clearer description of the analyses, and the details of the procedure omitted in the previous submission. The authors added a substantial number of participants to Experiment 1, which increased the statistical power of their analyses, and conducted Experiment 2 to help disambiguate between the potential explanations of children’s behavior in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 also offers an advantage of generalizing the effect found in Experiment 1 to a different culture. What remains unclear to me is : (1) how the authors decided on how many participants to add to Experiment 1 (2) why Experiment 2 was specifically conducted with Malay-speaking children (3) how might the reported experiments contribute to the discussion on the effects of children’s choice of what they learn on learning outcomes (cf Sim et al.) and what the developmental trajectory of these effects might look like (4) why children’s frequency and duration of lookaways in Experiment 2 wasn’t analyzed: this would have provided us with some insight about the potential differences in children’s engagement with the task and their effects on word learning (if any). I suggest that the authors address these questions in the next round of revision. Other points: Line 24: please clarify what you mean by “passive in such situations”. Line 54: The transition to talking about the video deficit is abrupt. Screen media does not necessarily imply *passive viewing* in the context of tablets. Consider adding an opening sentence that will orient the reader and help expect the discussion about the video deficit. Line 64: Define pseudo-social. I can infer from my previous comments what this means, but the reader will need an explicit definition. Lines 71-73: Specify the ages of “younger toddlers” and “older toddlers”. Table 1: Consider renaming 36-mo group a “40-mo group”. The average age is 39.62 months. Line 163: Perhaps child-directed speech? Infant-directed speech seems strange here. Line 193: Remove superscript from “was”. Table 2: Display mean reaction times separately by condition. Lines 269-271: I am having trouble parsing this sentence. Please consider rephrasing. Something like “In this experiment we set out to examine whether the opportunity to choose the objects that will be labeled influences children’s learning of those labels”. Line 288: So, this effect seems to be pretty small and relatively hard to interpret? Perhaps discuss if anything can be made of this? There was a discussion in the intro about the effects of age, which, I believe, should continue in the results section of Experiment 1. Does the observed condition*age interaction inform our understanding of the developmental trajectory of children’s ability to benefit from choosing what they learn? Line 296: Remove the hyphen from age groups. Line 385: Remove “both”. Lines 406-431: It seems to me that considering that the level of engagement with the app could be a potential factor that influences children’s learning, it would be reasonable to analyze the frequency and the duration of lookaways in each condition. Looking to the target object during the learning phase does tap into this question but it misses out on children’s overall level of engagement with the task. Lines 619-630: Unclear to me if this is quite the right conclusion. If children learn regardless of the condition, it suggests that the level of app interactivity (at least as far as controlling the information presented) is not a predictor of learning outcomes. The way I see it, this is not a good reason for parents or educators to be alarmed. Reviewer #2: Thank you for your careful attention to my comments and questions. The authors provided further details to clarify the points in the previous reviews, including my own. I also appreciate the authors' effort to increase the sample size and conduct a follow-up study to address potential confounders. I am satisfied with how the authors have addressed and incorporated my comments. I have one suggestion describe below, to improve the clarity of the manuscript. Page 13: In the discussion section of Experiment 1, the authors said, "there were no differences in children’s accuracy of responses" (Page 13, L277-278) during the familiar test phase. However, the results section of Experiment 1 includes the following: "the familiar phase and the 2-AFC, condition significantly predicts accuracy, with children providing more accurate responses in the passive condition relative to the active condition" (Page 13, L260-261). These two statements contradict each other, so it should be corrected. ********** 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 [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.] 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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 2 |
|
PONE-D-19-23077R2 Word learning from a tablet app: Toddlers perform better in a passive context PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ackermann, Thank you for submitting the revised version. Having checked it I do not see any need to send it out for further review as I am basically happy with the revisions. However, I will return it to you requesting Minor Corrections hoping you will be able to reupload it with some small changes as detailed below – all suggested to improve clarity of the analyses and their interpretation. Once you have addressed these points I trust the manuscript should be ready for publication. My line numbers below refer to your version without the tracked changes. The wording from line 233 onwards (and the equivalent for Exp 2) should be rephrased to explain why there was no random slope of Age by Words. You presently refer to a random effect of Age which is not quite correct as you have random effects of Participant and Word. In essence, you should explain why your model did not contain the full random effect structure RTlog ~ Condition * Age + (1|Participant) + (Condition * Age|Word) I am not suggesting you change the model but am asking you to state clearly that full random effect structure with slopes of Condition, Age and their interaction by Word resulted in convergence problems. This is just a request to put the wording right. I also note that in figures A1 and A2 the group now labelled as 40-months-old is still labelled as 36-months-old – please correct this. Also, you currently have two figures 2 – I presume the latter figure labelled 2 on the top left of the page is meant to be figure A2. While you are at this it would help if you could put the figures in the right order to expedite the final editing process. Line 240: Please change ‘The model included the interaction…’ to ‘The models included the interaction…’ as you are describing three models, one for each task. I am still somewhat confused about the coding of the effect of Age in the analyses of Experiment 1. The sum-coding of Age adopted now makes it difficult to interpret the coefficients and to ascertain whether performance in the 30-months-olds differed from the 24-months-olds, and whether performance of the 40-months-olds differed from the 30-months-olds. My preference would be for treatment coding with either 24- or 30-months-olds as the reference category but to improve general interpretation of the model results please try to be a bit more explicit in the text regarding the effects of Age in the Familiarisation and 2-AFC tasks. In your narrative that explains the RT analyses on pages 11/12 please include a brief summary of the model results for the 4-AFC task – Table 3 shows there were no significant effects but that should be stated explicitly in the text. Please tone down the interpretation in lines 303-305 – while the 24-months-olds were indeed the only ones showing an effect of Condition it is misplaced to call it “much faster” based on what the violin plot in Figure 3 shows. “Somewhat faster” seems more appropriate. Please label the dashed horizontal line in Figures 6 and 7. Lines 310 and 314 referring to the ‘passive benefit across the ages’ sound redundant – please rephrase. To address the points raised by Reviewer 1, please include a brief justification for analysing only looks to the target and not lookaways. You have justified it in your rebuttal letter but other readers may have similar questions so it would be good to address this head-on, somewhere in the vicinity of lines 406-409. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 06 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols I very much look forward to receiving your revised version, which I hope will be the final one. Kind regards, Vera Kempe 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.] 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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 3 |
|
Word learning from a tablet app: Toddlers perform better in a passive context PONE-D-19-23077R3 Dear Dr. Ackermann, 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. Thank you very much for your thorough revision and your efforts in trying to address all concerns. It is good to see this important work now being shared widely at PlosOne. 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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 help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- 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. Kind regards, Vera Kempe Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
|
PONE-D-19-23077R3 Word learning from a tablet app: Toddlers perform better in a passive context Dear Dr. Ackermann: I'm 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 let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Prof Vera Kempe Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
Open letter on the publication of peer review reports
PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.
We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.
Learn more at ASAPbio .