PONE-D-22-21099Effects of immersion and spatial openness of the virtual reality environment on divergent thinkingPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ichimura,

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.

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Two Reviewers have evaluated the manuscript. Although Reviewer 2 gave a positive opinion and suggestions for improvement of the take-home message of the work, Reviewer 1 found several possible methodological issues. I encourage Authors to submit a revised version taking into account all Reviewers' concerns, especially in terms of methodological clarity, correct identification of the variables involved in the study, possible adjustments to data analysis and discussion/limitations. ​

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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: Yes

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Yes

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: - The work explores the connection between immersion and divergent thinking with the help of VR. 2 experiments were conducted; 1) comparing the effect of different level of immersion on divergent thinking, and 2) comparing open vs closed environment when viewed in VR. The authors claim that higher immersion leads to more divergent thinking and that VR novelty effect is not a factor driving this increase in divergent thinking behavior. Although the experiments were conducted well, I do not believe that the author’s claim are well supported as there are many open questions and missing data points. Please seem my detailed comments below.

- “The present study focused on divergent thinking because of its affinity with VR” – This statement needs to be expanded on and would benefit from a citation. The connection here is not evident. The following text in the same paragraph says that other studies used this, but it does not explain the why. Considering this work is focusing on divergent thinking, it needs to do a better job of explaining the why behind the focus.

- “Researchers have examined the effects of immersion on creativity in real-world 75 and VR settings [17,21–23].” – Similar to my previous comment, simply stating something and providing citations is not enough. The why of the investigation in immersion and divergent thinking is critical for the reader to understand but is missing here.

- The related work covers some good works, but does not discuss them well enough to show where this work fits in well. It would be ideal to discuss inferences and not just state results from a particular work.

- Experiment 1

o The author talks about the effects of immersion on divergent thinking, but they do not seem to have measured immersion using a survey or otherwise. They seemed to have only measured AUT and compared that. It is extremely critical to measure the levels of immersion in a study where immersion is an IV. Users can have varying levels of immersion even in VR and the high variability in the current AUT scores as can be seen in the box plot could have easily been because of the highly varied levels of immersion in VR. If the author did not measure these scores this should be listed as a limitation and perhaps can phrase their comparison as one between different levels of exposure rather than levels of immersion.

o Based on the fact that immersion scores were not measured some of the inferences made in the discussion are questionable. For example, “suggesting that high immersion in the environment through VR resulted in better divergent thinking performance” – We do not know this because immersion was not measured post experience.

- Experiment 2

o “The sample size was determined such that the number of participants in each group would be the same as that in Experiment 1” – Why was this a necessity? I would have likes to see the power analysis details similar to experiment 1.

o “I can conclude that the results of Experiment 1 were not because of the novelty of the VR experience.” – This conclusion cannot be drawn without comparing the scores of the control group who saw the lab in experiment 1 to the ones who viewed a 360 video of the lab in VR. Please revise.

o The narrative of this experiment is a bit more digestible as it does not directly talk about immersion and its connection to divergent thinking. However, immersion scores would have immensely helped explain the high variance in the coast 360 video condition. The author seems to have completely overlooked this aspect and I would like some discussion around this to be included in the text.

- The author seems to often compare their findings to works conducted in the real world. However, there is a drastic difference between the two, i.e. the combined effect of multiple senses. Prior research shows that engaging other senses greatly enhances immersion and presence. As the author pointed out, they only engaged the visual sense in their experiments here. Although the author does discuss this in the limitations, this discrepancy and potential effects of the same need to be discussed in detail as part of the discussion.

Reviewer #2: The submitted article is particularly interesting and crucial in terms of designing virtual reality experiences. The literature cited is carefully chosen and relevant to the two studies. However, I recommend adding two or three sentences in the conclusions to provide general indications on how the results of the two studies (particularly the second on spatial openness) can be used in the design of virtual reality, training, or online training experiences. Indeed, I believe that this would add value to the article and provide a good starting point for future research. I also suggest to change a letter in line 27 ("Virtual reality" (VR) by inserting the capital r), and to line 37 (where it is written "special openess" instead of spatial).

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Effects of Virtual Reality’s viewing medium and the environment’s spatial openness on divergent thinking

PONE-D-22-21099R1

Dear Dr. Ichimura,

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.

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Kind regards,

Stefano Triberti, Ph.D.

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 #1: 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 #1: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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

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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

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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: (No Response)

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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

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