PONE-D-21-32162The biased hand. Mouse-Tracking metrics to examine the underlying conflict processing in a race-implicit association testPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Berlingeri,

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.

==============================Both reviewers raise a number of highly relevant theoretical points that need to be addressed. Particularly when it comes to the concepts of bottom-up and top-down, conscious/ unconscious and implicit/explicit the manuscript needs to be clearer and more precise in what is actually meant by these concepts, and how they relate to the design and results that are reported here. Rigorously revising your manuscript so that it has a stronger and specifically unambiguous/ clear theoretical embedding will increase the readability and the impact of this paper. Reviewer 1 also raises a relevant point with regards to the design: if the blocks are indeed not counterbalanced, then this has important consequences for how the results can be interpreted (i.e. whether they are potentially just sequence effects). If there was no counterbalancing, I would urge you to run a follow-up experiment that does counterbalance the sequence of the blocks over participants, to ensure that your current results are not confounded. ==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 19 2022 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Marte Otten, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: This study presents results of original research investigating conflict processing in a race IAT (Caucasian/African; positive/negative) among Caucasian native Italian speakers. Participants completed both a classical, reaction-time based race IAT and a mouse-tracking (MT) version. The manuscript is overall well-written, although I would like the authors to perform additional proofreading as several typos and minor errors are left in the manuscript. 120 participants took part in the study (a few excluded) and the authors seem to suggest that sample size was determined based on previous research using a MT version of the IAT. Although this rule of thumb may be sometimes warranted, I would have expected a more stringent a priori power analysis. This being said, I have several comments, mainly regarding (lack of) theoretical justification and some related to methods and analyses.

1/p.5: Given the theoretical background mobilized by the authors, I was wondering whether it is appropriate to state that "motor corrections [are] needed to connect cognition to action" -> this may (artificially) distinguish action from cognition, while we may consider the two are so intrinsically connected that this distinction is difficult to defend. What do the authors think?

2/p.5: Please precisely define your definitions of bottom-up and top-down processes (including “processes”) - these terms are sufficiently equivocal to raise debates (with some scholars questioning their relevance altogether).

3/p.5: Please provide a much more rigorous and convincing rationale for you 3-phase choice: this is an important feature of your work that is currently ill-justified -> why are 3 phases needed - compared to 2, 4 or an infinity (at the theoretical level, as this is not a trivial choice for MT)? Indeed, beneath the surface (appealing simplicity), this 3-phase categorization has the potential to jeopardize the very advantages of mouse-tracking (providing continuous signals).

4/p.5: Stating that the "early phase (...) [may comprise] purely implicit, bottom-up mechanisms" is currently inappropriate. Please refer to recent papers discussing the problems associated with clearly defining purely "implicit" processes. Second, by no means should implicit be equated with bottom-up processes (as I understand them but, again, these need to be defined). Third, past research relies on mouse-tracking to question the implicit/explicit distinction and some of the study’s results go in the same direction. So, to avoid incorrectness/overstatement, please stay close in your wording to what this early phase may plausibly reflect.

5/p.5: As the terms conscious and unconscious processes are often debated, either they need to be defined or should be replaced (I am for instance doubting that JB Freeman uses the conscious/unconscious terminology, except maybe in some of his early work). Later on, the authors use "unconscious, purely implicit, bottom up processes". I urge the authors to be both more cautious and precise in their wording. They are not equivalent according to current literature and are equivocal without further clarification.

6/p.6: I would have expected a better integration of this bimodality/unimodality aspects with the authors' phases model. Could the authors please provide some insights?

p.9: It seems like the authors did not counterbalance critical congruent and incongruent blocks. If not, this is a serious issue, both experimentally (problem in design) and statistically (incorrect estimation of effect sizes - here, artificially increasing effect sizes). Could the authors please clarify and provide appropriate justification?

7/p.12: Why only subject ID, and as random intercept only (what about slopes?) and what about stimuli? Please provide a strong justification of your selected model and, if changes in random effects impact your main findings, this should be acknowledged.

Reviewer #2: The authors adapted the race IAT to the Mouse-Tracking setting and explored the relationship between the race IAT and metrics used in Mouse-Tracking. They found that some metrics from adapted race IAT in Mouse-Tracking also showed the congruency effects from the regular IAT. They also used a novel way to segment the Mouse-Tracking metrics by its temporal unfolding and examined their relationship with the IAT score. I appreciate the authors attempts to compare two methods that are both able to capture the more automatic and uncontrollable processes yet are usually studied under different frameworks. However, I have several major questions about the work.

First, regarding the utility of Mouse Tracking for studying race biases, in addition to the citations included in the paper, Melnikoff et al., 2020 showed Mouse-Tracking are useful in studying racial biases. It predicted behavioral racial biases. Although it did not compare IAT test and Mouse-Tracking directly, it makes me wonder what is new about this manuscript. There are a lot of descriptive results in the manuscript, but it’s unclear to me what is the main question this research is trying to solve. This is partly due to my questions (see below) about the two main points the authors are trying to demonstrate in the paper.

Second, in the intro and discussion, the authors mentioned multiple times about bottom-up and top-down processes and seem to suggest that Mouse-Tracking results can help to adjudicate the different processes. This is also one of the main goals of the paper. Maybe I misunderstand the authors intention, but I’m a bit confused about this theoretical point. What are top-down and bottom-up conflict, respectively in the Mouse-Tracking context? And how and what question is the three phases model can help to solve?

Third, could the authors help me to understand the reasons behind dissecting by temporal mark? Also, after the factor analysis, the authors picked one metric from each factor to follow up. However, the other unpicked metrics show similar quality to the picked ones. What would the results be if the other metrics from the two factors are used? This makes me question whether the second goal of this paper, identify metrics from Mouse-Tracking that is comparable to the IAT metrics, is achieved properly.

Fourth, one thing Mouse-Tracking is inherently different from IAT is that people are explicitly evaluate the targets in Mouse-Tracking (more like self-report). In a standard Mouse-Tracking task, people can take their time to reach a final decision and this is part of the RT data. However, IAT sometimes pose a time limit on responses or take care of the longer time when calculating D score. Does the authors take some steps in the work to alter the design of the Mouse-Tracking task to the IAT test?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-21-32162R1The biased hand. Mouse-Tracking metrics to examine the underlying conflict processing in a race-implicit association testPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Berlingeri,

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.

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

Thank you for the revised manuscript. Unfortunately, the original reviewers were not available anymore to evaluate whether your revisions met their requirements. I have reviewed the revised manuscript myself: with the implemented changes it meets the publication requirements with regards to the manuscript. However, without access to the original raw data (so not the results that are in the manuscript and supplements) I cannot accept this manuscript. Please make sure that the original datafiles on which your analyses are based are available and accessible (obviously after they are anonymised). If that is taken care off, I can accept the manuscript as it is.

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

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 08 2022 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: https://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.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Marte Otten, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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):

Thank you for the revised manuscript. Unfortunately, the original reviewers were not available anymore to evaluate whether your revisions met their requirements. I have reviewed the revised manuscript myself: with the implemented changes it meets the publication requirements with regards to the manuscript. However, without access to the original raw data (so not the results that are in the manuscript and supplements) I cannot accept this manuscript. Please make sure that the original datafiles on which your analyses are based are available and accessible (obviously after they are anonymised). If that is taken care off, I can accept the manuscript as it is.

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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.

The biased hand. Mouse-Tracking metrics to examine the conflict processing in a race-implicit association test

PONE-D-21-32162R2

Dear Dr. Berlingeri,

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,

Marte Otten, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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