PONE-D-20-21363

Dynamic Perceptive Compensation for the Rotating Snakes Illusion with Eye Tracking

PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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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: I Don't Know

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

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: In a series of three experiments, the authors test whether a gaze contingent display can be used to reduce the perceived motion in the rotating snakes illusion. This is expected to work, given previous research indicating that eye movements increase the strength of the illusion. The motivations for this work are a bit unclear in the manuscript. Two potential mechanisms are presented in the introduction, but what has been learned from this work in terms of the mechanism of perception of the illusions is not specified in the discussion. And I think that the guidance for engineering applications is unclear here, unless the authors simply mean that gaze contingent compensation should be considered a tool that can decrease gaze-related illusions.

The findings are generally sound, but the conclusions are over-stated. In several places, the authors state results as though the optimizations are general to all occurrences of RSI. For example, Experiment 1 is described as finding the “optimal” parameters. Lines 204-206 say that a ~.5 deg/s rotation compensation reduces RSI effects. But this and other values may be specific to the tested individuals and experimental setup (display brightness, specific pattern arrangement, lighting, etc.). These statements should be weakened. Further, as the authors point out, the effect is dependent on age and probably also a host of other individual factors. Thus, where the authors say the system “can be personalized”, it is probably more appropriate to say “must be personalized”. The statement that the established parameters “realizes to develop more universal compensation system for optical illusions” (lines 506-7) also seems to overstep the data: this system is specific to RSI.

I don’t understand how this study relates to visual perceptual discrepancies in VR and HCI (lines 41-46). If an observer perceives motion when presented with this kind of visual pattern, even though the image is still, this is natural vision. Illusions are perceived in normal vision. Under what VR or HCI situation would you want to augment vision by reducing visual illusions in the periphery—particularly if this process requires a great deal of calibration for specific people and contexts?

Line 133 says “Both systems were set to drive at 30 Hz” and it is unclear what two systems are referred to here. Were the display and eye tracker set to 30 Hz? Why are 90 Hz and 60 Hz values also reported in the same paragraph? The current text is unclear. A 90 Hz sampling rate is well below the benchmarks achieved by research-grade eyetrackers, and may negatively impact the saccade detection. However, a 30 Hz rate is definitely too low to be valid: previous work has shown that such low-resolution eye tracking fails to reproduce expected saccadic parameters.

Lines 228-231 suggest that the system compensated regardless of where participants looked on the display, but this was not specifically tested. True, participants were allowed to gaze freely across the screen. However, the authors assessed compensation as an average across trials, not on the basis of where participants were looking during a trial. The compensation could work better or worse in certain regions of the visual field.

Lines 305-307 say that selection bias “probably occurred”. The text says “half of the subjects looked at the non-illusory image after the illusory image” but was this tested? This could be assessed using the eye tracking data that was collected. If it was not tested, please specify that where participants looked—and in what sequence—is speculation.

The authors say that an “effect of superposition” may have prevented the combination of spatial and temporal compensation from being effective, but the authors do not describe this superposition effect (beyond describing the data). What mechanisms do you believe are in play here? Also, the text here says “However, the effect is still majorly higher than the still image even in that case” but algorithms O and C did not have a significant difference—and therefore C is not “majorly higher”. The combined compensation algorithm does not appear to be effective, and this should be clear in the discussion.

Minor:

While the manuscript is sufficiently detailed, the English language should be improved to ensure that an international audience can clearly understand the text. The current phrasing makes comprehension difficult throughout.

The Supporting Information contains subject-level averages, rather than raw data (trial-by-trial responses). As per PLOS data policy, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available.

I am interpreting the reported “0.1%” significance levels as p=.001. If this is not correct, please clarify these percentages.

Reviewer #2: Review on Kubota et al. “Dynamic perceptive compensation for the rotating snakes illusion with eye tracking”

Overall evaluation

The authors present three experiments on perceptual compensation in the rotating snakes illusion, elaborating earlier work by different authors (e.g., Murakami et al. [14), Otero-Millan et al. [16]). Key innovation in the paper is a dynamic compensation system synchronized with eye movements. The overall writing is clear and the research rationale is convincing.

General comments

1. The abstract would probably benefit from reducing length and making it more succinct.

2. The eye-tracking device samples data at relatively low rate (90 Hz), which is comparably small when compared to state-of-the-art vision science labs. Could the authors please comment on the potential impact on the results?

3. I understand the purpose of the current work is to propose and analyze dynamic perceptive compensation procedures, however, from impression is that the new results are not adequately discussed in comparison to the earlier findings. Please comment.

Specific comments and typos

- l. 2: The first sentence of the main text is unclear. In what sense is it reproduced?

- l. 29: “depends”

EOF

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Dynamic perceptive compensation for the rotating snakes illusion with eye tracking

PONE-D-20-21363R1

Dear Dr. Kubota,

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.

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Kind regards,

Susana Martinez-Conde

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 #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 #2: Yes

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

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 #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 #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 #2: Thank you for addressing my concerns. I am happy with the revised version of the manuscript.

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Reviewer #2: No