Collective memory for American leaders: Measuring recognition for the names and faces of the US presidents

Adam L. Putnam; Sarah Madison Drake; Serene Y. Wang; K. Andrew DeSoto

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255209

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 12, 2021
20 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - Alexander N. Sokolov, Editor PONE-D-21-04866 Collective memory for American leaders:Measuring recognition for the names and faces of the US presidents PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Putnam, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration by two experts in the field and by myself, we feel that it has merit but could be upgraded in respect to two minor points that you are free to address in a revision of your work. We are delighted to report that all reviewers have unanimously recommended your research for publication. However, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the following points raised during the review process: (1) as requested by Reviewer 2 below, it would be helpful if you could provide some more discussion of your findings in the context of non-verbal aspects and mechanisms of collective memory, as this represents a much underinvestigated issue in the field and your particular novel contribution to that topic; (2) also, given your work on the pictorial aspects, could you please have a look and comment on any available data in your present research as to whether any priority/difference exists for the presidents shown on the US dollar banknotes or alike, because this could have eventually affected the results. Please submit your revised manuscript not later than six months from this date as beyond this time frame any revision has to be considered as a new submission. 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'. 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Kind regards, Sasha Alexander N. 'Sasha' Sokolov, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE 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 2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. 3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. [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: Yes 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 paper is a replication study of sorts that examines a well-documented finding about Americans' memory for presidents. Previous studies have demonstrated that there is a pattern to this form of collective memory that shows a serial position curve (highest memory for first few presidents and for most recent presidents with a spike in the middle due to the importance of Abraham Lincoln). These studies have been done with the names of presidents, but the current study does this with their pictures. At first glance, this replication may appear to add little to the research findings, but another robust finding in psychology is that memory for images is often impressively superior to that for words, suggesting that memory in this study might be superior to that found in others. This what gives the current study its interest and importance. To some degree this still does not amount to an earthshaking finding, but it does add an important piece to the overall puzzle of how collective memory functions, a topic that has been the topic of growing interest in psychology and other social sciences. The collection and presentation of the results are done in a very professional and organized manner, and the writing is very clear. Reviewer #2: This is a well-designed extension of prior work on the serial position curve in memory for the US presidents from name recognition/recall to face recognition. The general findings of the prior literature are replicated, with primacy, recency, and Abe Lincoln effects, with the exception that overall, picture recognition is lower than name recognition. This finding would seem to be at odds with the picture superiority effect, but the authors make a plausible argument that the format in which people learn about the presidents is almost always verbal rather than pictorial. Thus, all else being equal, fluency of processing and familiarity will be higher for names than presidential portraits. This point is interesting, and might be expanded upon as the subject of future work (but is not necessary for the current manuscript). I don't believe there are any technical points on which I would like to see revision. If they were so inclined, the authors might spend a little more time discussing how collective memories may take different forms than the verbal, narrative form that has been focused on almost exclusively in the empirical research. This is of interest because non-verbal collective memories may behave by different rules than narrative collective memories (Paul Connerton, for instance, writes about collective memory as a sort of procedural memory, which is another departure from collective memory as declarative stories). ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255209.r001
Revision 1
28 May 2021 Author Response Dear Dr. Sokolov, Thank you for the thoughtful comments from yourself and the two reviewers. We have revised the paper in light of the suggestions. Below we list your comments along with your suggested revisions, and our response to those suggestions. Editor Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration by two experts in the field and by myself, we feel that it has merit but could be upgraded in respect to two minor points that you are free to address in a revision of your work. We are delighted to report that all reviewers have unanimously recommended your research for publication. However, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the following points raised during the review process: (1) as requested by Reviewer 2 below, it would be helpful if you could provide some more discussion of your findings in the context of non-verbal aspects and mechanisms of collective memory, as this represents a much underinvestigated issue in the field and your particular novel contribution to that topic; Thank you for this valuable suggestion. We have added a paragraph to the general discussion that essentially makes the following point: while collective memory researchers from a variety of disciplines have conceptualized of collective memory as having many different forms (including verbal, imagery-based, and even procedural memory), currently quantitative approaches to studying collective memory in psychology have focused nearly exclusively on verbal memories. We argue that the current study provides a nice additional example of research examining non-verbal collective memories and recommend that future researchers continue to look to this extension. (2) also, given your work on the pictorial aspects, could you please have a look and comment on any available data in your present research as to whether any priority/difference exists for the presidents shown on the US dollar banknotes or alike, because this could have eventually affected the results. This was another valuable suggestion. In the exploratory data analysis section for each experiment we report descriptive statistics examining whether an individual appearing on US currency affects presidential recognition or confidence in that decision. Briefly, both presidents and non-presidents that appear on US currency are more likely to be remembered as presidents, and those decisions are generally more confident, than individuals who do not appear on US currency. Due to the small number of observations in these categories (e.g., there are only two non-presidents who appear on currency) we refrained from conducting inferential statistics and instead just reported descriptive statistics. In addition to the suggested revisions, we made a number of smaller grammar and style changes that we won’t bother to list here. Thank you in advance for considering this manuscript for publication in PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255209.r002
11 Jun 2021 Decision Letter - Alexander N. Sokolov, Editor PONE-D-21-04866R1 Collective memory for American leaders: Measuring recognition for the names and faces of the US presidents PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Putnam, thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to PLOS ONE and addressing the minor comments of the Reviewers. A PLOS ONE Staff Editor has drawn my attention to the fact that your research partly uses Amazon MTurk. While PLOS ONE does considers such studies for publication and your work comprises other non-web-based samples, we would like to invite you to include a comment on potential limitations commonly associated with this type of study, namely, the non-naivety and trustworthiness of participants. For more details, please see http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093623 and http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057410#s15. I am not intending to send your updated manuscript out to the Reviewers. Please submit your revised manuscript within six months from this date as otherwise, any revision has to be considered a new submission. 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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. Thank you for choosing PLOS ONE for reporting your research. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Sasha Alexander N. 'Sasha' Sokolov, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255209.r003
Revision 2
25 Jun 2021 Author Response Thank you for the opportunity to address concerns related to online samples in the current set of studies. In response to your suggestion we added two paragraphs to the general discussion where we highlight potential concerns with using online samples (such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk), and whether such concerns limit the generalizability of our results. As suggested by the editorial office we also added a statement clarifying that our studies were approved by the Furman IRB Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Putnam et al. Reviewer Response.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255209.r004
13 Jul 2021 Decision Letter - Alexander N. Sokolov, Editor Collective memory for American leaders: Measuring recognition for the names and faces of the US presidents PONE-D-21-04866R2 Dear Dr. Putnam, thank you for addressing the points raised in the previous email exchange. I apologize for the delay in reply due to unexpected commitments, but I am happy to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed 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. Thank you for choosing PLOS ONE for communicating your research. Best regards, Sasha Alexander N. 'Sasha' Sokolov, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255209.r005
Formally Accepted
16 Jul 2021 Acceptance Letter - Alexander N. Sokolov, Editor PONE-D-21-04866R2 Collective memory for American leaders: Measuring recognition for the names and faces of the US presidents Dear Dr. Putnam: 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 Dr. Alexander N. Sokolov Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255209.r006

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