https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6204-5325
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionJune 8, 2022 |
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PONE-D-22-16580Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Roberts, 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. Can you please address the concerns raised by the reviewers? Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 29 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:
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, Avanti Dey, PhD Staff 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 2. Please change "female” or "male" to "woman” or "man" as appropriate, when used as a noun (see for instance https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/gender). 3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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 Reviewer #2: No ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No ********** 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 paper investigates whether the threat of COVID-19 modulates automatic imitation. The concept is interesting though the lack of consideration of existing attitudes towards COVID-19 is problematic. The participants section should detail the prospective power analyses that were conducted to determine the sample size. If none were conducted then an analysis of the smallest effect size that can be found with the sample size used should be provided. It would also be useful to understand why data collection was initially stopped and then re-started. More clarity needed in the sentence on lines 101-103 on p12 – unclear what this is referring to. It would be useful to at least see examples of the sentences used within the method section for context (though I commend you for including the full list within supplementary materials). Please clarify whether p values are two tailed or one tailed. Confirmation required on line 156 p 14 as to whether it was the median of the individual participants across the study or the median across participants that was used here. Perhaps I am misunderstanding but on p8 - 9 you refer to within-participant means and a (lack of a) main effect of prime, but prime was the between subject variable – please clarify this analysis. Given the importance to your hypotheses on the priming factor, I would suggest conducting tests of equivalence or Bayesian statistics to ascertain the likelihood of supportive evidence towards the null in comparison to the alternative hypothesis for this data. It is questionable whether the interaction on line 208 could be argued to approach conventional levels of significance (particularly if you are reporting one tailed p values). Again, it would be useful to see Bayesian or test of equivalence analyses to support the data (especially given the weight you then put on this in the discussion). The comparisons of timepoints have small sample sizes, which should be discussed alongside your section on them suggesting there are no differences. A big omission in the discussion (and in the design of the study) is the pre-existing attitudes towards the pandemic. It has been incredibly divisive with some believing COVID-19 is just like a cold and going about their business as normal. As such, the sentences used are unlikely to change these deep-seeded opinions that COVID-19 is low risk. Having a co-variate of these attitudes would likely have been very informative. Whilst I am not suggesting you conduct another study including this (though if you are conducting further research in this topic I would strongly recommend it), I do think this needs to be discussed as a limitation in the discussion. Another key limitation that should be discussed is that perhaps one reason for the (lack of) results around the prime is that there was no risk of harm to participants as it was online so no need to adapt their behaviour. Indeed, when online (or when wearing a mask) one may argue that imitation may be even more important in lieu of facial expressions for the latter for example. Reviewer #2: The manuscript reports findings of an online study on possibility to modulate imitative tendency by contextual primes, specifically those associated with risk of COVID-19 infection. In general, compatibility effect emerged in this dataset and was more prevalent in slower relative to faster response time bins. Tendency to imitate others was not, however, modulated by the situational context related to COVID-19. After reading the manuscript, my main concern is with its methodology. First, the main hypothesis seems rather too convoluted to me. I am unsure whether the primes could have been directly relevant for participants in terms of safety or risk. In situation where everyone was bombarded by mass media on COVID-related issues on a daily basis, the participants could have been desensitized to this kind of stimuli. The sample was also relatively young and presumably without serious health issues, so the extent to which they could have been concerned about the ongoing pandemic is questionable. Is there any evidence that these primes had a desired effect (beyond difference in valence, arousal, and dominance)? Many items are related to risk of infection only indirectly and social aspect is not obvious. Second, the automatic imitation paradigm is not described in sufficient detail and it is therefore unknown to which degree spatial (or other) characteristics might have influenced reported results: (1) the stimulus hand was rotated counter-clockwise, but we do not know whether it was right or left stimulus hand, (2) the participants used right hand to react, but the sample consisted of right- as well as left-handers. The spatial mappings for the latter group are likely to be in opposition to right-handed participants. Moreover, experience in using right hand is not comparable between left- and right-handers, (3) I am not sure whether the stimulus movement was downward (finger press) and response movement upward (finger lift). On page 6, line 123 the authors mention that participants indicated their readiness by pressing the keys, but further down we learn that they also responded by pressing these (already pressed?) keys (line 129). All these aspects could have influenced the magnitude of automatic imitation in this study and they need to be clarified in text and/or illustrated in a figure before it can be established whether the spatial compatibility effects were indeed minimised. Statistical analyses: 20 trials per condition seem like a rather modest number and I am not sure further division into time bins is meaningful (or necessary – the rationale for this analytical step was not explained). I would also opt for a non-parametric version of ANOVA, given small sample size. Moreover, can we realistically expect significant effects in this small sample? Was the expected effect large enough to be detected in these circumstances (small sample, between-subject design)? At the very least, sensitivity analysis should be conducted to look at the power. ANOVA analyses of standard deviation indices are redundant, I do not understand why they were performed in the first place. Another issue is the absence of any data concerning personality characteristics (e.g., anxiety). This leaves possible interpretations of a null effect wide open. Finally, one has to bear in mind that automatic imitation paradigm is essentially a response inhibition task. Social component might not be strong enough and possible spatial influences combined with what I see as weak contextual primes and unknown individual differences of participants could have contributed to reported results. ********** 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. |
| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-22-16580R1Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Roberts, 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. ============================== As you will see, reviewer 2 is still conerned about the issue of spatial compatibility between the stimulus and the response, which is ususally overcome by using orthogonal orientations between the direction of movement and the observer's or imitator's personal body part. It is not proposed that you run ocntrol experiments, but it is requested that you explicitely and extensivley acknowledge the fact that the effect you are measuring is spurious and contains an un-measurable proportion of simple spatial compatibility rather than genuine action observation effect. This is actually a very big issue in action observation protocols, whcih should always be controlled fro spatial compatibility issues. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 03 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:
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, Luigi Cattaneo, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (if provided): As you will see, reviewer 2 is still conerned about the issue of spatial compatibility between the stimulus and the response, which is ususally overcome by using orthogonal orientations between the direction of miovement and the observer's or imitator's personal body part. It is not proposed that you run ocntrol experiments, but it is requested that you explicitely and extensivley acknowledge the fact that the effect you are measuring is spurious and contains an un-measurable proportion of simple spatial compatibility rather compared to the genuine action observation effect. This is actually a very big issue in action observation protocols, whcih should always be controlled fro spatial compatibility issues. [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: (No Response) ********** 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: No ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No ********** 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: Thank you for your responses. It is surprising that apriori power analyses weren't conducted. In the participants section you should detail what the current sample size was based on. Reviewer #2: After reading the revised version of the MS, my concerns over methodology of this study remain. On the basis of paradigm description provided in the revised MS I believe that orthogonal-spatial compatibility effects were not considered and the measured effect confounds spatial and imitative influences. Although many existing studies do not take spatial effects into account in their designs (either simple or orthogonal), sufficient evidence on this issue is now available (see papers on automatic imitation paradigm as well as other spatial compatibility tasks). Second, these spatial compatibility effects differ for right- and left-handers. While both subgroups might have had a similar magnitude of compatibility effect in this particular sample, its primary sources can be different for each subgroup. The resulting effect could be due predominantly to orthogonal-spatial compatibility in the right-handers, while the opposite could be true for left-handers. In other words, while inclusion of left-handers ensured larger sample, the measured effects became more confounded. In this context, it is irrelevant that the same stimulus was presented to the entire sample – all responses were confounded to some extent (and this extent is unknown). Given that additional data collection to address this methodological oversight is not feasible at this stage, the issue of orthogonal compatibility has to be reflected in interpretation and discussion of the results because a lack of behavioural modification by social cues can well be due to measurement of spatial, not imitative characteristics. I strongly suggest that authors become familiar with issues associated with automatic imitation paradigm – specifically those related to spatial confounds and external validity of the paradigm (e.g., recently reported lack of association between imitation inhibition using similar paradigm and mimicry). Rationale for modest number of trials (i.e., to ensure cooperation of participants) should be provided in the Method section. I disagree with the claim that majority of studies on automatic imitation comprise similar number of trials/participants – large-scale reports are also available. Moreover, individual differences in automatic imitation effect have been revealed and automatic imitation does not manifest consistently at individual level even in neurotypical participants, nor it has a “standard level” (page 4, line 76). Minor: - How did the authors arrive at the reported minimum effect size (ηp2= .043)? Please specify. - It would be useful to report statistical indices including effect size for contrasts in case of a significant interaction term. - Sentences on page 15, lines 330-336 belong to the Result section. In conclusion, my main concern is that it is impossible to tell what was measured in the present study. It is likely that the version of automatic imitation paradigm captures non-social (spatial) rather than social (imitative) compatibility effects. A revision of the MS, where the authors acknowledge this issue and incorporate orthogonal compatibility effect into their interpretations. ********** 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. |
| Revision 2 |
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PONE-D-22-16580R2Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Roberts, 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 3 and 4 as it currently stands. As you will see below, the newly included reviewer highlighted relevant points regarding the inclusion of current literature, the rationale for the design as well as other issues with the analyses and reporting thereof. We feel that addressing these points as outlined in their review will strengthen your manuscript. You will also note that whilst both reviewers provided relevant suggestions on how to address issues of compatibility, their reading of the analysis on both compatibility and time bin interaction differs. I understand that including both factors (compatibility and time-bin interaction) would require a hierarchical analysis approach. To complicate matters further, I have another suggestion by using a different kind of analysis altogether. I would have expected to see a linear mixed-effects model analysis for this type of data/research question. This would have prevented some of the issues identified by the reviewers while at the same time considering other factors (timepoint, gender, differences in priming sentences, individual participant data; and thus more powerful). My concern regarding the bin-analysis in its current form is that a higher variance in longer time intervals is simply more likely due to longer time intervals. Please clarify this point. Also, a rationale regarding the fast/slow response mode is missing in the introduction. Was this a post-hoc exploratory analysis? If so, this needs to be stated. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses all the points raised during this reviewing cycle. As for the issues surrounding your compatibility analysis, please address all comments and requests for additional data and presentation of findings and clarify the analysis as well as the rationale in the manuscript and/or the response letter. In addition to the revision, I urge you to include the individual trial RT data in your OSF repository plus participants’ gender (or sex, depending how the participants demographics question). For the data to be of value for certain types of analyses, individual trial data is needed, and gender seems relevant, considering that males have been found to be less Covid-19 risk adverse than females (and you should in fact consider the unbalanced participant cohort as one of your limitations). Finally, I agree with the reviewer for the need of a figure illustrating the stimuli/task in the manuscript and I would recommend uploading your visuals onto the repository. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 09 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:
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, Corinne Jola 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): We invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses all the points raised during this reviewing cycle. As for the issues surrounding your compatibility analysis, please address all comments and requests for additional data and presentation of findings and clarify the analysis as well as the rationale in the manuscript and/or the response letter. Please see further comments in my response letter as well as the reviewers' comments. [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 #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 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 #2: Partly Reviewer #3: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Although the authors added a brief section on spatial compatibility effects in the revised MS, they support their main interpretation using papers building on different paradigms with potentially different spatial relationships (e.g., participants using both hands). I am therefore unsure if these results can be generalized to the presented study. It has already been revealed that the stimulus hand used here elicits predominantly orthogonal compatibility effects and that purely imitative effects exist, but are rare, more modest in magnitude, and likely elicited by different stimulus. Other stimuli/contexts might not elicit significant compatibility effects at all. This is the reason why reporting strength of the effect (incom-com contrasts) in slow and fast bins is important (compatibility x time bin interaction). Were all incom-com differences in slow and fast bins significant? This could help the interpretation. For example, numerical difference in fast bin between incom and com trials for neutral condition seems very small (12ms) compared to the same difference in unsafe condition (49ms). Moreover, it would be easier on a reader to present these results in a graph rather than table. Reviewer #3: In this manuscript the authors used an automatic imitation task preceded by a sentence comprehension priming task to test for the influence of COVID-related primes on imitation. An imitation effect was observed but no influence of the priming task. I appreciate that this manuscript has already been reviewed and it’s galling to have to deal with a new set of comments after two rounds of review, so I leave it to the editor’s discretion to decide which of the following points are essential for the authors to address. Introduction The focus on ‘advanced mammals’ in the first sentence seems unnecessary and inaccurate – a wide range of species show forms of imitation, including birds (Richards et al., 2009). The introduction is missing discussion of studies which do not show an effect of social priming on imitation, including several recent and more highly powered studies (Genschow et al., 2022; see also the recent special issue on this topic by Cracco et al., 2022). The rationale for the study doesn’t follow from the discussion of the BIS in the introduction. According to the introduction, the effects of the COVID-related primes should only be seen in participants with tendencies to implement avoidance behaviours (last paragraph of page 3) making it unclear why any effect of COVID-related primes on imitation should be found in a more general population sample? Method Please provide a clearer statement of the statistical power the sample size afforded. The two studies cited here are a decade old and more recent studies have used far larger sample sizes (again see Cracco et al. special issue / editorial). Although you can’t estimate the likely size of the effect you are trying to detect, you can at least state what effect you were powered to detect (e.g. ‘a sample of 20 participants per group provides 80% power to detect an effect of at least d=0.9 at an alpha level of .05’). Please provide a figure illustrating the stimuli/task. 20 trials per condition is a lot fewer than in most automatic imitation tasks. Please provide rationale in terms of the number of trials needed to obtain a robust estimate of response time in each condition, and also indicate the mean/SD number of trials per condition remaining once false starts, delayed responses, and error trials were removed; and discuss how this relates to the number of trials required for estimating RT. Results Given the very low number of trials I don’t think the bin analysis is appropriate. At the very least the authors should report the mean/SD number of trials remaining within each bin. It would be helpful to add the magnitude of the compatibility effects to Table 1 (i.e. the mean/SE of the Incompatible-Compatible difference across participants), please. Last paragraph of page 9 – this states that the dependent variable was the compatibility effect ‘Further inspection of the compatibility effects as a function of movement time bins’ but then compatibility is reported as a factor in the analysis – so is this actually analysing RT not compatibility effect? Please clarify. First lines of page 10 – the Bayes’ factor associated with this interaction is in favour of the null hypothesis, suggesting limited support for different magnitude compatibility effects across the slow and fast bins – please check and then reflect this in your discussion (if indeed, given my points about trial numbers above, you retain the bin analysis). Discussion Page 14 – ‘the present compatibility effects unfolded within the slow rather than fast reaction time bins’ – this isn’t quite accurate, the effects were greater in the slow bins but they were still present in the fast bins? A follow-up analysis of the simple effects of compatibility at each time bin would help to address this point. I think the conclusion should be qualified ‘did not modulate automatic imitation in this group of young UK adults’. Richards C, Mottley K, Pearce J, Heyes C. 2009. Imitative pecking by budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus, over a 24 h delay. Anim. Behav. 77, 1111–1118. ( 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.01.019) Genschow, O., Westfal, M., Cracco, E., & Crusius, J. (2022). Group membership does not modulate automatic imitation. Psychological research, 86(3), 780–791. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01526-1 Cracco, E., Genschow, O., & Baess, P. (2022). Top-down social modulation of perception-action coupling. Acta psychologica, 222, 103481. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103481 ********** 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 #2: No Reviewer #3: 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. |
| Revision 3 |
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PONE-D-22-16580R3Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Roberts, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: On the basis of the reviews, the manuscript will be accepted once the minor changes requested have been made. Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS ONE’s publication criteria and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact. For Lab, Study and Registered Report Protocols: These article types are not expected to include results but may include pilot data. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 14 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:
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, Merryn D. Constable 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 #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 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 #2: Partly Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: Please comment on the low number of trials per condition per time bin in the discussion. Page 10 line 230: the dependent variable in this analysis is RT not incompatible-compatible difference, so this should say ‘further inspection of the response times…’. Page 11, line 238: does this t test refer to the compatibility effect in the fast or in the slow time bins? Please provide the equivalent test for the other time bin. ********** 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 #2: No Reviewer #3: 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. |
| Revision 4 |
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Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation? PONE-D-22-16580R4 Dear Dr. Roberts, 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, Merryn D. Constable Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-22-16580R4 Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation? Dear Dr. Roberts: 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. Merryn D. Constable Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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