PONE-D-20-24359

New measures of agency from an adaptive sensorimotor task

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wang,

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.

The manuscript describes a very interesting task which could be of practical use, and I think it will be of interest to PLoS readers. However, both reviewers have a few concerns which need addressing before the manuscript can be published. In particular, Reviewer 1 has concerns about the utility of the task considering almost half of the participants had to be excluded. The rest of the concerns are fairly minor and should be easily addressed. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 12 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:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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,

Deborah Apthorp, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Please pay careful attention to the reviewer's comments and revise your manuscript accordingly. In particular, Reviewer 1 expresses concern that almost half the participants in each experiment were excluded. Could the authors please respond to this concern?

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

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://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: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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: 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

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: This study reports the results of an online motion tracking task to quantify movement agency. The procedures seem robust, although more details would be helpful.

Major

It is very concerning that almost half the participants in each experiment had to be excluded. A test that yields usable data only half the time does not seem like it would have much clinical utility. Why would so many people miss more than 40% of the catch trials? How long does the test take, on average? I don’t think that was mentioned in the manuscript. Is it long enough that many participants get bored? Do the authors have plans to make the test more engaging or other changes that might reduce the number of exclusions? These issues should at least be discussed.

More details about the task are needed. Did the two dots perform identical movements, apart from the cursor movement? Or did each dot have its own random motion? How were participants instructed to move the cursor? What if they don’t bother moving the cursor and just guess the answers? Were such trials excluded? Did some participants move the cursor more than others, or did the amount of cursor movement change over the course of the test?

Minor

Line 46. More details about the Libet clock paradigm would be helpful. How it works, what the patient is asked to do, etc.

Line 57-58. I’m not sure what this means. For readers who have no background knowledge of FMD, like me, it would be helpful to have more explanation. What effect does this mismatch have on the patient’s ability to function? How does it affect their daily lives?

The method of assessing test-retest reliability is a little unusual. Are there any plans to have participants complete the task two separate times, at least several days apart, and assess how consistent the results are within participants, across days?

Reviewer #2: In this study, Wang and colleagues introduce a new method for taking quantitative measurements of perceived agency, and demonstrate the effectiveness (and reliability) of the method in two online experiments with human subjects. Specifically, in their task two visual cursors are presented as subjects freely make movements. Critically, one cursor is yolked to subjects movements (under volitional control, with a titrated "control level") and the other moves randomly. Using a 2AFC and confidence ratings, the authors could measure the acuity of agency judgements under varying levels of visuomotor control. This technique is poised to improve these measurements relative to other techniques that suffer from various confounds, allowing for both better diagnostic capabilities and basic research into agency and perceived control.

This technique and study was very thorough, the methods were clear, and the test-retest reliability suggests that it is a very effective trait measurement. Overall, I recommend it for publication as it seems like a clear improvement on previous methods. I have several modest concerns/suggestions:

1) The paper could give a better sense of the observed movement data – what were subjects' movement velocities? What did their trajectories look like? Did they explore the whole workspace? Was there a relationship between specific kinematic properties (e.g. average velocity) and agency thresholds?

2) Figure 1A is not particularly illuminating – I would suggest showing several frames of the dots moving, perhaps with example movements of the subject below it, to really illustrate the task dynamics. Otherwise it's hard to get a sense of the phenomenological experience of the subjects, which is key in studies of high-level cognitive inferences like agency.

3) For the test-retest reliability correlations, why were the particular trial bins chosen (8-10/11-13)? These should be justified in the text somewhere.

Minor:

- misspelled reference to "Dannett" (ref 14) I believe should be "Dennett."

- it could be nice in the correlation figurers (i.e. fig 3) to have rho values depicted on the figure panel.

**********

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.]

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.

New measures of agency from an adaptive sensorimotor task

PONE-D-20-24359R1

Dear Dr. Wang,

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.

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,

Deborah Apthorp, Ph.D

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

**********

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

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: my comments have been addressed.

my only further suggestion for later versions of the task itself is to continuously record and save mouse positions to afford more in-depth analysis of movements.

**********

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