The emotional mechanism underlying the adverse effect of social exclusion on working memory performance: A tDCS study

Qingguo Ma; Yu Pang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0284262

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 23, 2022
27 Jan 2023 Decision Letter - Irene Cristofori, Editor PONE-D-22-35184The Emotional Mechanism Underlying the Adverse Effect of Social Exclusion on Working Memory Performance: a tDCS studyPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ma, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 13 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. 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Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71942004 and 72002202), and the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (No. 20YJC630040). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. 6. 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 If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 this manuscript, Qingguo and Yu investigated whether social exclusion has an adverse effect on WM performance, and whether this effect is mediated by the negative emotion induced by the social exclusion. Before participants performed a Cyberball task, they received sham or anodal tDCS over the rVLPFC. Immediately after that, participants fulfil a need-threat scale and mood rating questionnaire, to finally perform a 2-back task. As authors suggested, after sham stimulation, participants in an exclusion condition in the Cyberball task, presented lower scores in the mood rating questionnaire and the performance in the WM task was worse compared to included participants. Suggesting that negative emotion modulates the worsening in WM task. On the other hand, anodal tDCS over rVLPFC abolished such effect. This study addresses an interesting question i.e., whether the adverse effect on WM provoked by social exclusion, is modulated by negative emotion exclusion-induced. The manuscript is overall well written, procedures are well designed and overall methods sound. In sum, I think this manuscript is appropriate PLOSE ONE journal. I have a few minor comments that I think authors should consider in a revision. How did the authors determine the size sample? Did they use Gpower, did they refer to previous literature? I think they should add a short statement clarifying this aspect. There is an aspect that a bit crucial to me: the difference in mood rating between excluded and included participants, after receiving anodal stimulation was marginally significant (p = 0.06). I consider that the authors should discuss this issue, since I don’t think that they can strongly claim that the anodal tDCS reduced the negative emotion induced by social exclusion compared to social inclusion. This result, consequently affects the conclusion that the performance in WM is mainly modulate by low mood rating. In fact, the main conclusion that the authors can state is that anodal tDCS reverse the effect of social exclusion on the WM, but they cannot conclude that such modulation is principally due to the mood rating. A curiosity: why the authors only considered to test the excitatory effect of the stimulation, and they didn’t take into account the inhibitory aspect, delivering cathodal tDCS over the rVLPFC? Please proof read the text: in some cases, formulations could be improved. ****** 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 ******** [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.0284262.r001
Revision 1
22 Mar 2023 Author Response Dear editor and reviewer, We appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions given by the reviewer, which have been conscientiously considered in our amendment of the manuscript and significantly improve the manuscript. All the changes made to the manuscript are marked with Track Changes in the revised manuscript. Our detailed responses to the comments of the reviewers are given below. Response to reviewer #1 Point 1. How did the authors determine the size sample? Did they use Gpower, did they refer to previous literature? I think they should add a short statement clarifying this aspect. Response: Thanks for reviewer’s suggestions. The way we determined the size sample was according to the calculation of GPower 3.1 (Faul et al., 2009). Under the premise of power (1-β) =0.95, α = 0.05 and effect size f = 0.4 (Weintraub-Brevda & Chua, 2019), a minimum of 84 participants were needed, with 21 in each group. As a reference, Riva et al. (2015) recruited 80 participants with 20 in each group and He et al. (2018) recruited 44 participants with 22 in each group. Based on this, 128 participants were recruited in our research with 32 in each group. A short statement clarifying how we determined the size sample is added in the Participants section (page 3) in the 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes' file. Reference: [1] Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A., & Lang, A. G. Statistical power analyses using G Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior research methods. 2009;41(4):1149-1160. [2] Weintraub-Brevda, R. R., & Chua, E. F. Transcranial direct current stimulation over the right and left VLPFC leads to differential effects on working and episodic memory. Brain and Cognition. 2019;132:98-107. Point 2. There is an aspect that a bit crucial to me: the difference in mood rating between excluded and included participants, after receiving anodal stimulation was marginally significant (p = 0.06). I consider that the authors should discuss this issue, since I don’t think that they can strongly claim that the anodal tDCS reduced the negative emotion induced by social exclusion compared to social inclusion. This result, consequently affects the conclusion that the performance in WM is mainly modulate by low mood rating. In fact, the main conclusion that the authors can state is that anodal tDCS reverse the effect of social exclusion on the WM, but they cannot conclude that such modulation is principally due to the mood rating. Response: Thanks for reviewer’s suggestions. We agree with your opinion that we can’t strongly claim that the anodal tDCS reduced the negative emotion induced by social exclusion compared to social inclusion based on the marginally significant result (p = 0.06). It might indicate that the difference in mood rating score between excluded and included participants had a tendency to decrease under anodal tDCS. We have modified the description in the Result section (page 5) in the 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes' file. In order to probe the relationship between social exclusion, negative emotion and WM performance, we applied a mediation model to analyze the data from sham stimulation group through the PROCESS SPSS computational tool. The results indicated that the impairment of social exclusion on WM performance was fully mediated by negative emotion. Besides, we applied a 2 × 2 between-subject ANOVA to test the alleviating effect of anodal tDCS over the rVLPFC on the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM performance. The ANOVA results showed that mood rating score and 2-back task accuracy of excluded participants receiving anodal tDCS over the rVLPFC were both significantly higher than excluded participants receiving sham tDCS. Besides, we also analyzed the mediation model with the data from the anodal stimulation condition and found no more mediating effect. These results contributed to our second conclusion that anodal tDCS over the rVLPFC would alleviate the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM performance by reducing the negative emotion. Point 3. A curiosity: why the authors only considered to test the excitatory effect of the stimulation, and they didn’t take into account the inhibitory aspect, delivering cathodal tDCS over the rVLPFC? Response: Thanks for reviewer’s suggestions. One of the aims of this study was to investigate the potential solution of neural intervention to reduce the impairment of social exclusion on working memory performance. Based on the findings from previous studies that (1) social exclusion would induce negative emotion (e.g., anxiety, sadness, depression), and (2) negative emotion would impair WM performance, we first hypothesized that negative emotions induced by social exclusion mediate the relationship between social exclusion and WM performance. Besides, according to the findings from previous studies that anodal stimulation over the rVLPFC would reduce the negative emotion, we further hypothesized that anodal stimulation over the rVLPFC would alleviate the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM performance. Along this line, we only considered to test the excitatory effect of the stimulation because it was in line with our study purpose i.e. investigate the potential solution of neural intervention to alleviate the impairment of social exclusion on WM performance. According to reviewer’s suggestion and for further understanding the role of rVLPFC in the impairment of social exclusion on WM performance, we will take cathodal tDCS into account to test the inhibitory aspect in our future research. We have added this future research direction in the Discussion section (page 9) in the 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes' file. Sincerely, Qingguo Ma on behalf of the co-authors. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284262.r002
28 Mar 2023 Decision Letter - Irene Cristofori, Editor The Emotional Mechanism Underlying the Adverse Effect of Social Exclusion on Working Memory Performance: a tDCS study PONE-D-22-35184R1 Dear Dr. Ma, 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, Irene Cristofori Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284262.r003
Formally Accepted
31 Mar 2023 Acceptance Letter - Irene Cristofori, Editor PONE-D-22-35184R1 The Emotional Mechanism Underlying the Adverse Effect of Social Exclusion on Working Memory Performance: a tDCS study Dear Dr. Ma: 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. Irene Cristofori Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284262.r004

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