PONE-D-20-23944

Improving dog training methods: Efficacy and efficiency of reward and mixed training methods

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro,

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.

It was reviewed by two experts in the field and they have suggested some modifications be made prior to acceptance.

If you could write a response to reviewers, that will help to expedite revision when you re-submit.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 17 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.

I wish you the best of luck with your revisions.

Hope you are keeping safe and well in these difficult times.

Kind regards,

Simon Clegg, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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At this time, please address the following queries:

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3. If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.
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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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: No

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 and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting your protocol to PLOS ONE. Studies of high level of evidence comparing reward-based training methods with aversive-training methods are missing in the literature, your research will hopefully fill an important gap in the field. Overall, your manuscript is well presented, there is a strong rationale for the proposed study and the methodology is feasible and clear. I am looking forward to reading your findings in the future. Please see some of the suggestions I have written below:

Ethics statement: ethical approval of the study protocol is desirable.

Data availability: where will the data of the study be made available? https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability (there are some recommendations on this page)

Abstract: you might prefer "randomized" instead of "pseudorandomized" to avoid confusion by readers without a scientific background?

Line 57: what do you mean by "other non-invasive techniques (reward methods)"? It sounds a bit redundant as compared to line 56 ('exclusively rewards') but I may have missed something.

Line 63: in light of the potential importance of this large study, you could write its sample size, e.g. "of companion dog training (n=XXX)"

Line 75: just remove a space here "aversive/mixed methods"

Line 114: in which context are they going to be video recorded? During the whole training process? Analysis of behaviour of both dog and handler?

Line 116: will this material remain confidential or be shared (e.g. supplementary material) upon study publication? To clarify, you could write "will only be used by the research team for research purposes (i.e. data analysis, XXX)".

Lines 123-125: same comment from above about ethical approval

Lines 128-132; 204-210: besides randomization of individuals and control of the variables 'years of training', age and gender, are you going to use any practical measure to reduce group bias? If dogs are likely to differ in performance (e.g. due to age difference, genetics, training experience), a test of baseline performance (e.g. time required to learn a simple new task) could be added.

Lines 159-160: are all dogs naive to these tasks?

Lines 161-162: who will control the number of sessions and duration of sessions? Self-report, diary, video records? How long is each session expected to last? Are you going to standardize the duration of the sessions?

Lines 165-166: at this task, wouldn't be important to tell the handlers to cover "all" the zones of this field as opposed to just letting them walk "randomly"? Is the food going to be spilt on the same areas for all dogs?

Lines 167-168: are they going to use only verbal commands or visual cues are also allowed? Standardization is important.

Lines 169-174: same as above regarding visual and verbal cues.

Line 174: is the food going to be placed on the same area for all the dogs? Any target to help the handlers throw the dumbbell on a similar location?

Line 183: the techniques allowed for each group should be included in the protocol. It lacks details on how exactly the group reward differs from the group mixed - this is a very important piece of information.

Lines 188-190: who is going to score the dogs? Ideally, more than one person should rate the performances and inter-rater reliability should be calculated (especially for the 'general impression' score, as it is more subjective).

Reviewer #2: This protocol covers an interesting and important applied topic: the efficiency and effectiveness of different dog training approaches. However, many methodological details are missing, making it impossible to assess the soundness of the proposed methods.

There are several different reward-based training methods and aversive training methods and, among a given category, they differ in their effectiveness. For example, research has shown that, among reward training methods, diverse methods differ in their efficiency (Fugazza and Miklósi 2014) and effectiveness (Fugazza and Miklósi 2015). I am not aware of studies comparing different aversive methods, but it is logical to assume that, for example, diverse aversive stimuli may differ in the intensity of their effects, at least, and potentially in other aspects.

It is therefore crucial that the authors carefully describe the methods that will be used for training, rather than only classifying them as reward-based or aversive.

A detailed description of the protocol applied in the training sessions with the two methods would help enormously in this sense.

The authors propose that the efficiency of the training methods will be assessed by measuring the number of sessions needed to reach a criterion that is determined by the trainers. However, it is fundamental to know what would be the length (N. of trials? Time?) of a training session. Training sessions of different durations have been shown to produce different outcomes (Demant et al. 2011).

The duration or number of trials of the sessions should be somehow standardized.

It is likely that both the dogs and the handlers of this study will have extensive experience with mixed methods, but little or no experience with reward methods. I think that this may affect the results. How do the authors plan to take it into account?

Since the evaluation of the dogs’ performance in the test is somewhat subjective, I warmly recommend the observer that will score the dogs’ performance to be blind with regard to the treatment received by the dog, to avoid a biased judgment.

References:

Demant H., Ladewig J., Balsby T.J.S., Dabelsteen J. (2011) The effect of frequency and duration of training sessions on acquisition and long-term memory in dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 133, 228-234.

Fugazza C. and Miklósi A. (2015) Social learning in dog training: the effectiveness of the Do as I do method compared to shaping/clicker training. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 171, 146-151.

Fugazza, C. and Miklósi Á. (2014) Should old dog trainers learn new tricks? The efficiency of the Do as I do method and shaping / clicker training method to train dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 153, 53-61.

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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

[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.

PONE-D-20-23944R1

Improving dog training methods: Efficacy and efficiency of reward and mixed training methods

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro,

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.

==============================

Many thanks for submitting your manuscript to PLOS One

Your manuscript was reviewed by two experts in the field, and they have recommended some minor modifications be made prior to acceptance

I therefore invite you to make these changes and resubmit. If you could write a response to reviewers, that will greatly aid revision upon re-submission

I wish you the best of luck with your revisions

Hope you are keeping safe and well in these difficult times

Thanks

Simon

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 17 2021 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,

Simon Clegg, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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 and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Dear authors,

Thank you for considering my suggestions and making several changes to the manuscript. The quality of your work improved substantially, particularly the methodology, which is much clearer and detailed. I am happy to recommend your report protocol for publication and I wish you all the best conducting the study.

Best wishes.

Reviewer #2: The authors have now provided an improved version of the manuscript and I believe that this is now publishable, after minor revision.

Since flexibility is allowed for the trainers to choose which actual rewards and punishments to use, I strongly recommend that in the data collection the authors include a list of the rewards and punishments actually used by the trainers, because these may play an important role in determining the outcome of the training.

Apart from this, which I believe is very important, I only have a few minor suggestions:

Line 62: a parenthesis is missing from the reference.

Lines 151-152: This sentence describing the subjects' previous experience may better fit above (e.g. in line 138). Then you can continue with the more detailed description of similar behaviours previously learnt by the dogs.

Lines 256-257: What will be the criterions for scoring the performance? E.g., speed of execution? Latency to execute? Detailed criterions may help reducing the subjectivity level of this judgment.

**********

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 #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.

Improving dog training methods: Efficacy and efficiency of reward and mixed training methods

PONE-D-20-23944R2

Dear Dr. Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro,

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,

Simon Clegg, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Many thanks for resubmitting your manuscript to PLOS One

As you have addressed all the comments and the manuscript reads well, I have recommended it for publication

You should hear from the Editorial Office shortly.

It was a pleasure working with you and I wish you the best of luck for your future research

Hope you are keeping safe and well in these difficult times

Thanks

Simon