PONE-D-22-35280The Augmented Reality affective training increases the care communication skill and empathyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Nakazawa,

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Humaira Nisar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

PLease refer to the reviewers comments and revise the manuscript accordingly.

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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

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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: This study cannot be accepted at this stage. Therefore, I would like to propose the following extensive modifications, which can enhance the reliability and validity of the authors’ study:

1. Research questions, that drive the paper, should be built in the introduction from an ongoing and pertinent bibliography (up to 2022-23) and these should be of global interest and not focused on a particular local problem. Identifying a research gap is the most important by indicating in-text some newer references that are significant to your particular field of research.

2. The problem statement needs to be clear into Introduction. Does the relevant literature refer the potentials of using “conventional” instead of typical AR-supported activities to drive us there?

3. Some indicative literature review articles regarding the use of AR-supported learning that the same authors read maybe of great importance to readers in order to identify the research “gap” more easily without mention too many previous studies.

4. The authors need to provide any potentials regarding the use of AR settings. Are there any literature reviews to give us a point of view about this investigation? In other words, the authors need to “combine” any key word that investigate with any relevant study that can be integrated in-text as “background”.

5. Any information respecting participants’ background can be beneficial for readers to understand better the level of technological literacy can overcome this “novelty effect” using AR.

6. The authors should make explicit suggestions about how their study affects the design or use of AR systems. Is there something new about a particular theory, or is there evidence of theory advancement?

7. The added value of authors’ work is not clear in terms of proper and current research (up to 2022-23), because several references are not up-to-date.

8. Authors should answer the main research question in the conclusions and discussion. Please provide a reasonable need to read your work’s results than previous ones or simply answer what we learned compared with current, significant research (up to 2022 should be your work’s “significance”).

9. How general are your results and how do you believe that such findings have to be of global interest? Please relate these with your limitations and Discussion that is not exist. Why?

10. Are there any points of view related to the consequences of this study’s limitations that may have an impact on their findings?

11. Conclusions and limits are too short for such a study.

12. Practical and educational implications are not provided.

Reviewer #2: This is a well written paper that presents a relevant description of a new methodology. The authors useful information has been provided. this papare may be of great interest to Plos One readers and all that are interested in nwe methods of teching and learning.

Reviewer #3: The paper is interesting, and the information is up-to-date. However, the article has been conducted in a poor manner. It should be improved in the following directions:

[1] The paper must be fully developed - includes discussion, contribution, implication, and limitations.

[2] I would like to see a well-developed discussion (minimum two pages) comparing and contrasting solution/results presented in the work with existing work and then a subsection of it presenting contributions to theory/knowledge/literature (at least one to two paragraphs) and followed by a subsection on Implications for practice (at least one page). In these paragraphs authors should compare their research approach with previous research, citing references of others' research.

[3] The overall document should be checked for grammar, syntax and typos errors. Based on the above comments, I strongly believe that the authors will improve the quality of their manuscript given that they will make a detailed revision of the manuscript based on the provided comments

[4] The authors must add a new section called Background Literature which establishes the context of the research. This section explains why this particular research topic is important and essential to understanding the main aspects of the study. Usually, the background forms the first section of a research article/thesis and justifies the need for conducting the study and summarizes what the study aims to achieve.

[5] The authors must add a pseudocode diagram in section 2 explaining how the software algorithm is implemented. What software is used to implement the VR platform?

[6] In the Section 2, the authors should briefly highlight the main developments of their research topic and identify the main gaps that need to be addressed. In other words, this section should give an overview of your study. The section should be organized as: What is known about the broad topic?, What are the gaps or missing links that need to be addressed?, What is the significance of addressing those gaps?, and What are the rationale and hypothesis of your study?. Please rewrite this section.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Nikolaos Pellas

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Augmented reality-based affective training for improving care communication skill and empathy

PONE-D-22-35280R1

Dear Dr. Nakazawa,

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,

Humaira Nisar

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

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: The authors have satisfactorily responded to all questions and made the necessary changes to the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: I am pleased to note that the authors have adequately addressed all the concerns raised in my previous comments. They have taken the necessary steps to improve the paper by addressing the issues related to the introduction, methodology, and the use of programming code figures. The expanded introduction now provides a better context for the research, the methodology section has been elaborated to provide a clearer understanding of the procedures employed. These revisions greatly enhance the clarity and comprehensibility of the paper, making it a more valuable contribution to the field. I commend the authors for their efforts in addressing the concerns and improving the quality of their work.

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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

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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