Perceptual visual dependence for spatial orientation in patients with schizophrenia

Rima Abdul Razzak; Haitham Jahrami; Mariwan Husni; Maryam Ebrahim Ali; Jeff Bagust

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0278718

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 23, 2022
21 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Manabu Sakakibara, Editor Transfer Alert This paper was transferred from another journal. As a result, its full editorial history (including decision letters, peer reviews and author responses) may not be present. PONE-D-22-23565Perceptual Visual Dependence for Spatial Orientation in Patients with SchizophreniaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Razzak, 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. Two experts in the field have carefully reviewed the manuscript. Both reviewers aclnowledged the manuscript is well written with leaving some minor concerns as appended below.I will make the final decision after receipt of your reply and necessary revision. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 05 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, Manabu Sakakibara, 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 provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. 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. 4. 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. [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: Partly ******** 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: The manuscript is very well written and states a very useful finding about perceptual differences in individuals with psychosis. Every question/concern that came to mind while I was reading the manuscript was answered/addressed in the Discussion, so I have very few suggestions for improvement for this very excellent manuscript. My two small suggestions are: -- perhaps the statement "probably indicating a sub-clinical vestibular dysfunction" should be removed from the abstract, or changed to a statement like "consistent with previous reports of possible vestibular dysfunction in patients with schizophrenia" since there are no measurements of vestibular function in the present work -- when I saw the data in Figure 3, I assumed (at first -- until I read the discussion) that this correlation was driven by age. The lack of correlation in controls is a key finding for supporting the conclusion that the correlation of SVV with disease duration is not simply because visual/vestibular integration is impaired with age. Perhaps the authors could include a 2nd panel in Fig. 3 showing the lack of correlation in the control population? This might be a very convincing visualization. Reviewer #2: - RDT and VD explanations are well written. But I suggest the authors to group the first 3 paragraphs together for more coherence. - Line 76 : The authors mention few articles on vestibular dysfunction in schizophrenia. The only one cited is from the 1970s. It would be wise to put one or two more recent references to support this argument. - Line 83 : “This deficit may manifest as impaired functioning in dynamic visual environments.” Can you give some examples that are more meaningful? - Line 112 : “All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity.” Please specify the scale. - Line 138 : “Subjects observed the screen while sitting upright on an armless chair”. What was the distance measured between the screen and the eyes of the patient? And why? Was this distance the same for everyone? - Line 162 : “Participants were informed of the importance of spatial accuracy, and that the trials were not time restricted”. It would have been interesting to see how quickly the participants would have considered the task successful. Why didn't you measure this parameter? - Line 279 : Regarding conflicting reports on the effect of ageing, don't you think that more recent articles have more legitimacy in the results? Also, did these articles use exactly the same task as yours? If no, how can you discuss with these results? - The effect of gender was not discussed even though men represent nearly 75% of the sample. It is thus likely that the gender effect is significant. Was it included in your analyses? - Do you have prospects for future research to address or possibly compensate for your limitations? Comment to the editor : Although the research is interesting and innovative, the authors did not find significant results between patients and control group. I leave it to Plos One to validate or invalidate the article according to the coherence of the story and the results of the literature. However, I note that despite expectations contrary to the assumptions mentioned, the authors were able to adequately discuss the results found in relation to the literature. ****** 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: Yes: Cheryl Olman 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.0278718.r001
Revision 1
25 Oct 2022 Author Response Response to Editor 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The authors confirm that the submitted manuscript meets PLOS ONE’s requirements including those for file naming. 2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. We have included the following paragraph in the manuscript detailing how informed consent was obtained: “After the aim and impact of the study were explained to the healthy controls and to the patients and their relatives, informed verbal consent was taken. An impartial witness, who was not a member of the study team and worked at the center where the patients were treated, endorsed that the consent from patients and their relatives was voluntary and freely given. Only those who volunteered were included in the study”. 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. 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. The minimal data set can be found in an Excel file uploaded as Supporting Information File. 4. 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. There were no citations of papers that have been retracted. However additional citations were included to further support the Discussion section. Response to Reviewers The authors would like to thank both reviewers for their comments which enhanced the quality of the manuscript. The authors accommodated all comments as best as they can. Reviewer #1: The manuscript is very well written and states a very useful finding about perceptual differences in individuals with psychosis. Every question/concern that came to mind while I was reading the manuscript was answered/addressed in the Discussion, so I have very few suggestions for improvement for this very excellent manuscript. My two small suggestions are: -- Perhaps the statement "probably indicating a sub-clinical vestibular dysfunction" should be removed from the abstract, or changed to a statement like "consistent with previous reports of possible vestibular dysfunction in patients with schizophrenia" since there are no measurements of vestibular function in the present work. We took the reviewer’s suggestion and changed the statement according to their recommendation. -- when I saw the data in Figure 3, I assumed (at first -- until I read the discussion) that this correlation was driven by age. The lack of correlation in controls is a key finding for supporting the conclusion that the correlation of SVV with disease duration is not simply because visual/vestibular integration is impaired with age. Perhaps the authors could include a 2nd panel in Fig. 3 showing the lack of correlation in the control population? This might be a very convincing visualization. We included an additional figure depicting the effect of ageing on visual dependence in both healthy controls and patients (2 graphs). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reviewer #2: - RDT and VD explanations are well written. But I suggest the authors to group the first 3 paragraphs together for more coherence. The authors thank the reviewer for this suggestion, but they felt that it was sufficient to group the first two paragraphs only, so as not to make it into a very long paragraph. - Line 76: The authors mention few articles on vestibular dysfunction in schizophrenia. The only one cited is from the 1970s. It would be wise to put one or two more recent references to support this argument. The authors added a relatively more recent reference: “Haghgooie S, Lithgow B J, Gurvich C, Kulkarni J. Quantitative detection and assessment of schizophrenia using electrovestibulography. 4th International IEEE/EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, 2009; 486 – 489. doi: 10.1109/NER.2009.5109339. - Line 83: “This deficit may manifest as impaired functioning in dynamic visual environments.” Can you give some examples that are more meaningful? The authors provided some real-life examples such as crowded or busy environments, as walking in supermarket aisles, movements of crowds or traffic, moving images at the cinema, trees swaying, or while driving fast on a highway. - Line 112: “All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity.” Please specify the scale. The authors ensured that the participants had 20/20 visual acuity, and participants were allowed to put on their corrective spectacles if necessary. This was added in the Methods section. - Line 138: “Subjects observed the screen while sitting upright on an armless chair”. What was the distance measured between the screen and the eyes of the patient? And why? Was this distance the same for everyone? According to many studies on RFT and RDT, the distance between the screen and the eyes of the participant is 80 cm. The center of the screen was at eye level of the observer. This was added in the Methods section. Yes, the distance was the same for all participants, as they were all tested on the same computer/screen set up and the same place in the Psychiatry hospital. - Line 162: “Participants were informed of the importance of spatial accuracy, and that the trials were not time restricted”. It would have been interesting to see how quickly the participants would have considered the task successful. Why didn't you measure this parameter? The authors thank the reviewer for pointing this out. Fortunately, the software does record and stores the time of rod alignment for each trial. The authors analysed the time-related data and included the findings in the Results section. The significance of these results was included in the Discussion. - Line 279: Regarding conflicting reports on the effect of ageing, don't you think that more recent articles have more legitimacy in the results? Also, did these articles use exactly the same task as yours? If no, how can you discuss with these results? The authors did add more recent references in the Discussion on the effect of ageing on visual dependence, especially those utilizing the common and similar tests of visual dependence, specifically the RFT and the RDT. - The effect of gender was not discussed even though men represent nearly 75% of the sample. It is thus likely that the gender effect is significant. Was it included in your analyses? The authors appreciate this recommendation from the reviewer. Upon their suggestion, gender analysis was included, and the findings were addressed, with added references to enrich the Discussion. - Do you have prospects for future research to address or possibly compensate for your limitations? Definitely. The authors would like in future studies to add assessment of peripheral vestibular system function in patients with long-duration schizophrenia and determine any possible interference of long-term use of neuroleptic medications on vestibular functions. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278718.r002
18 Nov 2022 Decision Letter - Manabu Sakakibara, Editor PONE-D-22-23565R1Perceptual Visual Dependence for Spatial Orientation in Patients with Schizophrenia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Razzak, 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. Two original reviewers have carefully reviewed the revision. Their comments are appended below. Both reviewers are satisfied with your response and revision. I judged the revised manuscript is potentially acceptable with leaving some minor concerns which will strengthen your study. Please consider these remarks. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 02 2023 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, Manabu Sakakibara, 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. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: My few concerns from the previous round of review have been addressed. On re-reading the abstract I noticed that on the first use of SVV when it is defined it is defined as perceived visual vertical instead of subjective visual vertical, which might be mildly puzzling to readers; just a tiny change you might think about making Reviewer #2: Dear authors, I take into account the fact that you carried out a real work of bibliography following my remarks on the manuscript. I consider that your work to date is well done, in particular with the addition of recent bibliographic research as well as concrete examples illustrating your words. I transmitted to PLOS ONE the acceptance of the manuscript. These last comments will help you to finalize your manuscript = - Line 113 = I think I was misunderstood. I expect that the participants have normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. However, it would be wise to clarify the name of the scale used to measure the visual acuity. Is it a Snellen chart? Is it a Monoyer scale? Please clarify. I think this is an important criterion if other authors would like to follow your methodology. - Line 139 = Indeed, most visual studies mention eye-screen distances between 40cm and 100cm depending on the projection of the different stimuli. In relation to your biographical research, your answer is judicious. - Line 328 = I see that my point about age and gender effect has been perfectly addressed in the manuscript, with solid argumentation based on recent literature. This is a very good point. - Line 344 = Similarly, the remark about the time of rod alignment for each trial and also the time-related data were added in the results as well as the discussion and confronted with the literature. However, although the results were not significant between the two groups, I do not think it is necessary to comment on this. - Line 351 and line 369 = I find that the 2 paragraphs dealing with the effect of age on visual dependence are particularly well discussed. You compare the results currently reported in the article with those in the literature, and it's great. - Line 372 = Finally, it would have been wise to specify the number of people recruited in the study of Ashish. I also appreciated that you compared it with your current article by indicating age ranges and specifying the age range of your population. ****** 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 ******** [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.0278718.r003
Revision 2
18 Nov 2022 Author Response Reviewer #1: My few concerns from the previous round of review have been addressed. On re-reading the abstract I noticed that on the first use of SVV when it is defined it is defined as perceived visual vertical instead of subjective visual vertical, which might be mildly puzzling to readers; just a tiny change you might think about making We have substituted the word “perceived” by “subjective” in the abstract. Reviewer #2: Dear authors, I take into account the fact that you carried out a real work of bibliography following my remarks on the manuscript. I consider that your work to date is well done, in particular with the addition of recent bibliographic research as well as concrete examples illustrating your words. I transmitted to PLOS ONE the acceptance of the manuscript. We, the authors, would like to thank the reviewer for their encouragement and confidence in the changes made in the first revision of the manuscript. These last comments will help you to finalize your manuscript = - Line 113 = I think I was misunderstood. I expect that the participants have normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. However, it would be wise to clarify the name of the scale used to measure the visual acuity. Is it a Snellen chart? Is it a Monoyer scale? Please clarify. I think this is an important criterion if other authors would like to follow your methodology. We did add that the scale used to measure the visual acuity is the Snellen chart. - Line 139 = Indeed, most visual studies mention eye-screen distances between 40cm and 100cm depending on the projection of the different stimuli. In relation to your biographical research, your answer is judicious. We thank the reviewer for this encouraging comment. - Line 328 = I see that my point about age and gender effect has been perfectly addressed in the manuscript, with solid argumentation based on recent literature. This is a very good point. We thank the reviewer for this encouraging comment. - Line 344 = Similarly, the remark about the time of rod alignment for each trial and also the time-related data were added in the results as well as the discussion and confronted with the literature. However, although the results were not significant between the two groups, I do not think it is necessary to comment on this. We did remove from the Discussion section the paragraph where we attempted to provide a reason for the absence of group difference in time of rod alignment. - Line 351 and line 369 = I find that the 2 paragraphs dealing with the effect of age on visual dependence are particularly well discussed. You compare the results currently reported in the article with those in the literature, and it's great. We thank the reviewer for this encouraging comment. - Line 372 = Finally, it would have been wise to specify the number of people recruited in the study of Ashish. I also appreciated that you compared it with your current article by indicating age ranges and specifying the age range of your population. We included the number of people recruited (82 healthy adult volunteers) in the study of Ashish. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278718.r004
22 Nov 2022 Decision Letter - Manabu Sakakibara, Editor Perceptual Visual Dependence for Spatial Orientation in Patients with Schizophrenia PONE-D-22-23565R2 Dear Dr. Razzak, 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, Manabu Sakakibara, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278718.r005
Formally Accepted
24 Nov 2022 Acceptance Letter - Manabu Sakakibara, Editor PONE-D-22-23565R2 Perceptual visual dependence for spatial orientation in patients with schizophrenia Dear Dr. Razzak: 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. Manabu Sakakibara Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278718.r006

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .