Charitable crowdfunding donation-intention estimation depending on emotional project images using fNIRS-based functional connectivity

SuJin Bak; Minsun Yeu; Dongwon Min; Jaehoon Lee; Jichai Jeong

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0303144

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 29, 2023
12 Feb 2024 Decision Letter - Holger A. Rau, Editor PONE-D-23-35092Charitable crowdfunding donation-intention estimation depending on emotional project images using fNIRS-based functional connectivityPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Bak, 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. ============================== Dear authors, firstly, I am sorry for the delay - but unfortunately it was not easy to find reviewers. I am happy that now I can make a decision. I now have the report of a reviewer who is an expert in his/her field. Based on this report, I am happy to invite a major revision. The report is very detailed and very helpful. In terms of having a clear path of improving the article, such that it can become publishable, I really expect that you clearly follow all these helpful comments made by the reviewer. Based from my own reading of the article, I completely agree with the reviewer. One of the main issues is really that the experimental design is very hard to follow. I also asked myself about the timing of collecting the data on participants' intentions of donating or not. At the same time, the article is written in a manner that is very policy-related, which is good. However, this suggests that you may come up with policy implications (e.g., how to increase donation motivation by this image manipulations) and what are the potential underlying neuro-image channels? If for this reason, you also asked for the ex post willingness to donate (after treatment), then be clear about it and explain it. In summary. three things are really important for this revision: (1) clearly outline your exact experimental design more comprehensively in the "Methods" section; (2) clearly and more openly discuss and admit the limitations of your design (e.g., also as outlined by the reviewer, when you report in your manipulation checks the rather low shares of people who agreed that the shown neutral images are really neutral); another issue is, if you really find a null effect - also discuss what this means. I am aware about the fact that in neuro studies the sample size is typically rather small. However, this still raises some questions about the validity of your findings. Is it really a null effect when the sample size is low? Be more cautious about interpreting that. (3) You report a couple of different findings and presentations in your figures. It would be good, if you could increase the focus on your main findings that you want to sell with this paper (e.g., the ones of Fig. 5). However, try to be cautious in terms of not overinterpreting the findings. Good luck for the revision! Best Holger Rau ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 28 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. 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If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. Additional Editor Comments: Dear authors, firstly, I am sorry for the delay - but unfortunately it was not easy to find reviewers. I am happy that I can make a decision. I know have the report of a reviewer who is an expert in his/her field. Based on this report, I am happy to invite a major revision. The report is very detailed and very helpful. In terms of having a clear path of improving the article, such that it can become publishable, I really expect that you clearly follow all these helpful comments made by the reviewer. Based from my own reading of the article, I completely agree with the reviewer. One of the main issues is really that the experimental design is very hard to follow. I also asked myself about the timing of collecting the data on participants' intentions of donating or not. At the same time, the article is written in a manner that is very policy-related, which is good. However, this suggests that you may come up with policy implications (e.g., how to increase donation motivation by this image manipulations) and what are the potential underlying neuro-image channels? If for this reason, you also asked for the ex post willingness to donate (after treatment), then be clear about it and explain it. In summary. three things are really important for this revision: (1) clearly outline your exact experimental design more comprehensively in the "Methods" section; (2) clearly and more openly discuss and admit the limitations of your design (e.g., also as outlined by the reviewer, when you report in your manipulation checks the rather low shares of people who agreed that the shown neutral images are really neutral); another issue is, if you really find a null effect - also discuss what this means. I am aware about the fact that in neuro studies the sample size is typically rather small. However, this still raises some questions about the validity of your findings. Is it really a null effect when the sample size is low? Be more cautious about interpreting that. (3) You report a couple of different findings and presentations in your figures. It would be good, if you could increase the focus on your main findings that you want to sell with this paper (e.g., the ones of Fig. 5). However, try to be cautious in terms of not interpreting the findings. Good luck for the revision! Best Holger Rau [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: The authors used fNIR spectroscopy to examine the controversy about whether images with positive or negative emotional valence are more effective in stimulating people to make donations on online crowdfunding platforms. They recruited 64 young adults (ages 20 to 33, half female) from Korea University with written informed consent, but do not describe what how subjects were recruited or what they were told about the experiment. They report that “per presurvey donation intentions, we divided the experimental participants into three groups: donation, no donation (shopping), and non-intention groups (Methods, page 4, lines 8-9).” They presented positive, negative, and neutral images to induce emotional states in participants before they made two types of donation decisions (to donate or to shop (Methods, page 4, line 82). All subjects were apparently exposed to all three types of images (positive, negative, and neutral), as shown by the total number of subjects who rated each type of image for Tasks 1-3 (see Table 1). However, this is not clearly described, raising concern about exposure to multiple types of images in all subjects on the results presented. Generally, the design is really not clearly described despite 6 Figures and 1 Table. They say in conclusions (page 14-15) that “we divided the hemodynamic signaling responses of 64 participants by their donation intentions into nine types and compared them with each other/ They conclude that the valence of the images did not affect the decision to help or not, but it is not clear if this means it did not change presurvey donation intentions or the final response to donate or shop. They go on to say that more donation activity results in stronger functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex, and it could provide a way that the donor’s mental brain function could be predicted and recognized. However, there are several issues that need to be clarified regarding the design of the study, the results, and the discussion. It appears from Methods that the emotional images were generic, provided by the platform and are not tied specifically to unique charitable causes: “All project images used as donation images on Happybean were provided by the Korean internet platform Naver… (page 4, line 80). Then they presented positive, negative, and neutral emotional images to induce “incidental emotional states in participants before they made two types of donation decisions”, as shown in Figure 1 describing the overall experimental procedure (page 5 with 9 experimental types emerging from the possible combinations of 3 tasks (positive, negative, and neutral images), and (I think) presurvey intentions (donation, shopping, no intention). The survey results of the valence ratings using a 7 point Likert scale for the 3 sets of images (positive, negative, neutral are given in Table 1 on page 7. They summarize this by concluding that the “valence ratings of the project images in this study is properly designed”, but in fact the table makes clear that the neutral images were rated neutral only 36% (23 subjects) of the time and were rated positively by 40 subjects. Instead of pointing this out, they focus on the fact that the most frequent category in the seven-point scale is in conformity with their design, even though the overall direction of the valence is not so for the neutral images. They show in Figure 3 (results, page 8) that both positive and negative image sets increased the intensity of intention to donate or not (7 point Likert scale, not a dichotomous choice), whereas the images called neutral were mostly associated with not donating, even though they had been rated as positive by most subjects. What does this mean about the adequacy of the quantitative ratings of valence and intention to donate or shop? Something else is operating rather than just emotional valence of the images because most neutral images are rated positive by most subjects, but this is not discussed. The authors found no effect of image valence on the hemodynamic activity of the prefrontal cortex, as illustrated in Figure 4. The Figure shows the intentions to donate (presumably by design this was the intention rated presurvey and pre-image exposure) on the horizontal axis and the vertical axis is the variation from reduced activity (-1, labeled as low activation) to increased activity (+1, labeled as high activation). Nearly the responses for all 9 types (intention x image valence) are for low activation (Figure 4, below 0, dark to light blue with some white for no change) except for a dash of yellow for type 8. In the discussion, the authors present more results illustrated in their Figure 6, showing that the decision to donate (presumably in response to exposure to valenced images) was associated with reduced prefrontal hemodynamic activity whereas the decision to shop was associated with increased prefrontal hemodynamic activity. More discussion is needed about the meaning of this difference. Are the positive and negative valenced images just weak and unexciting? Does donation generally induce a state of calm rest from engagement with a charitable cause? Is anticipation of shopping more rewarding than helping others because the subjects in this study were self-preoccupied and not altruistic? What can be said about the meaning of this study without knowing more about the personality and motivations of the subjects studied? The authors have emphasized their findings about functional connectivity in relation to donation in their title and conclusions, and this is potentially their most interesting observation, as described in Figure 5. They say that “regardless of task type, the correlation map indicates that a higher FC correlation results in higher intentions to donate, whereas a lower FC correlation indicates lower intentions to donate or the inability to make decisions about donations.” However, inspection of the color bars show that nearly all 9 intention types have high functional connectivity, indicated red to yellow. There are channels with no detectable functional connectivity associated with shopping (why is this black instead of white as shown in the legend?). However, no statistical results are presented to indicate that the results are significant to justify the qualitative statements and conclusions. In the discussion, Pages 13 and 14 (related to Figure 6), the authors state that donation has been associated with activation of the medial prefrontal cortex in other prior research, but that the activation of the medial prefrontal cortex “is not observed in our experiment.” (page 13, line 173). They go on to say that the observed deactivation of the entire PFC, including the medial PFC” (page 13, line 176). However, Figure 2 shows the placement of the fNIR spectroscopy channels, leads, and detectors, which appear to be mostly located in what is usually called the anterior cortex or frontal poles (BA 10). This includes anterior aspects of the medial PFC but it seems an overstatement to say that the entire PFC can be measured by such placement using fNIRS. Perhaps the authors could be more clear about what brain regions are actually measured in this experiment. If the authors did record, subjects’ intentions prior to experimental manipulation, why didn’t they present any information about whether the baseline intentions were modified by their manipulation. That is, if someone set out to shop, was that changed by any of the experimental conditions? Or if they set out to donate, was that changed? If they had no preferred intention, did the intervention change that? Is the intention prior to experimental manipulation, a crude proxy for a measurement of their personality and whether they are self-centered, empathic, or charitable. This seems to be addressed to some extent by the results they report of short interviews of some donors after the experiment who reported that positive images had maximized their sympathy (page 12, line 149). Such a conclusion would require statistical evidence that positive images had changed intention to donate from its baseline following a planned intervention, but it is not clear that this is what the authors have reported. I cannot be sure because I still have questions about their design despite studying the paper carefully. This is an interesting study and I hope the authors will be able to answer my questions and obtain more data about who their subjects are in future work. As they say, the PFC has a key role in the regulation of emotional reactions, and its functional connectivity is strongly associated with individual differences in temperament and character (Zwir, I., Arnedo, J., Mesa, A. et al. Temperament & Character account for brain functional connectivity at rest. Mol Psychiatry (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-023-02039-6). ****** 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.0303144.r001
Revision 1
28 Mar 2024 Author Response We appreciate your contribution. According to your statement, we respond as follows. We respond by dividing your statement into nine questions temporarily. If we misunderstood your intention, please let us know again. 1) The authors used fNIR spectroscopy to examine the controversy about whether images with positive or negative emotional valence are more effective in stimulating people to make donations on online crowdfunding platforms. They recruited 64 young adults (ages 20 to 33, half female) from Korea University with written informed consent, but do not describe what how subjects were recruited or what they were told about the experiment. � Response: We supplemented the manuscript as follows. “In this study, 64 people (32 males and 32 females) from Korea University between 20 and 33 (mean and standard deviation of age: M = 25.67 sd = 2.69 years) participated in a same-day fNIRS study. All participants were recruited from the online community around KOPAS affiliated with Korea University in a month way. We have explained the whole process of experimenting, and all participants fully understood it.” 2) They report that “per presurvey donation intentions, we divided the experimental participants into three groups: donation, no donation (shopping), and non-intention groups (Methods, page 4, lines 8-9).” They presented positive, negative, and neutral images to induce emotional states in participants before they made two types of donation decisions (to donate or to shop (Methods, page 4, line 82). All subjects were apparently exposed to all three types of images (positive, negative, and neutral), as shown by the total number of subjects who rated each type of image for Tasks 1-3 (see Table 1). However, this is not clearly described, raising concern about exposure to multiple types of images in all subjects on the results presented. Generally, the design is really not clearly described despite 6 Figures and 1 Table. � Response: We supplemented the manuscript as follows. “All subjects were reportedly exposed to all three types of images (positive, negative, and neutral), as specified in the within-subject design (i.e., repeated measures design) process. This design can minimize the variance caused by individual differences among participants.” 3) They say in conclusions (page 14-15) that “we divided the hemodynamic signaling responses of 64 participants by their donation intentions into nine types and compared them with each other/They conclude that the valence of the images did not affect the decision to help or not, but it is not clear if this means it did not change presurvey donation intentions or the final response to donate or shop. � Response: We supplemented the manuscript as follows. “However, it relies on the participants' presurvey donation intentions or their subsequent response to donation or shopping.” 4) They go on to say that more donation activity results in stronger functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex, and it could provide a way that the donor’s mental brain function could be predicted and recognized. However, there are several issues that need to be clarified regarding the design of the study, the results, and the discussion. It appears from Methods that the emotional images were generic, provided by the platform and are not tied specifically to unique charitable causes: “All project images used as donation images on Happybean were provided by the Korean internet platform Naver… (page 4, line 80). Then they presented positive, negative, and neutral emotional images to induce “incidental emotional states in participants before they made two types of donation decisions”, as shown in Figure 1 describing the overall experimental procedure (page 5 with 9 experimental types emerging from the possible combinations of 3 tasks (positive, negative, and neutral images), and (I think) presurvey intentions (donation, shopping, no intention). The survey results of the valence ratings using a 7 point Likert scale for the 3 sets of images (positive, negative, neutral are given in Table 1 on page 7. They summarize this by concluding that the “valence ratings of the project images in this study is properly designed”, but in fact the table makes clear that the neutral images were rated neutral only 36% (23 subjects) of the time and were rated positively by 40 subjects. Instead of pointing this out, they focus on the fact that the most frequent category in the seven-point scale is in conformity with their design, even though the overall direction of the valence is not so for the neutral images. They show in Figure 3 (results, page 8) that both positive and negative image sets increased the intensity of intention to donate or not (7 point Likert scale, not a dichotomous choice), whereas the images called neutral were mostly associated with not donating, even though they had been rated as positive by most subjects. What does this mean about the adequacy of the quantitative ratings of valence and intention to donate or shop? Something else is operating rather than just emotional valence of the images because most neutral images are rated positive by most subjects, but this is not discussed. � Response: We agree with you. We didn't mean it, but we think this result is exaggerated, so it has been revised as below. “On the other hand, Task 3 elicited predominanatly neutral responses, yet there was a notable majority expressing positive feedback. In this study, we are focused on the effect of positive and negative images on donations, and the valence quantitative ratings of positive and negative tasks are considered appropriate.” � Response: Additionally, we discussed these results as follows. “However, this phenomenon is not observed in neutral images. Our research reveals that many participants reacted positively to the neutral image, but this did not lead to donations. It has been known that people tend to feel a neutral image positively or negatively depending on their current mood state [23]. In this study, it is impossible to control people's ever-changing emotions, so this phenomenon is considered beyond the scope of the study.” 5) The authors found no effect of image valence on the hemodynamic activity of the prefrontal cortex, as illustrated in Figure 4. The Figure shows the intentions to donate (presumably by design this was the intention rated presurvey and pre-image exposure) on the horizontal axis and the vertical axis is the variation from reduced activity (-1, labeled as low activation) to increased activity (+1, labeled as high activation). Nearly the responses for all 9 types (intention x image valence) are for low activation (Figure 4, below 0, dark to light blue with some white for no change) except for a dash of yellow for type 8. In the discussion, the authors present more results illustrated in their Figure 6, showing that the decision to donate (presumably in response to exposure to valenced images) was associated with reduced prefrontal hemodynamic activity whereas the decision to shop was associated with increased prefrontal hemodynamic activity. More discussion is needed about the meaning of this difference. Are the positive and negative valenced images just weak and unexciting? Does donation generally induce a state of calm rest from engagement with a charitable cause? Is anticipation of shopping more rewarding than helping others because the subjects in this study were self-preoccupied and not altruistic? What can be said about the meaning of this study without knowing more about the personality and motivations of the subjects studied? � Response: The purpose of this study is not to investigate the brain condition according to the subject's personality and motivation. The purpose of this study is to prove that there is little correlation between donation intention and brain activity between negative and positive project images. Also, the main focus of this section is to show the difference in brain activation between donation and shopping. Thus, we discussed the prior studies, and added it as follows; “This phenomenon is consistent with previous research results [32], indicating a decrease in frontal brain waves in people who make voluntary donations. Saffari et al. also confirmed that while shopping in a online shopping mall, people's brain activation increases [33].” 6) The authors have emphasized their findings about functional connectivity in relation to donation in their title and conclusions, and this is potentially their most interesting observation, as described in Figure 5. They say that “regardless of task type, the correlation map indicates that a higher FC correlation results in higher intentions to donate, whereas a lower FC correlation indicates lower intentions to donate or the inability to make decisions about donations.” However, inspection of the color bars show that nearly all 9 intention types have high functional connectivity, indicated red to yellow. There are channels with no detectable functional connectivity associated with shopping (why is this black instead of white as shown in the legend?). � Response: Our response is as follows. White here is not a channel without functional connectivity, it just means the mid-range between high and low blood flow. 7) However, no statistical results are presented to indicate that the results are significant to justify the qualitative statements and conclusions. � Response: The functional connectivity (FC) method is already a principle that works based on statistics. Specifically, we explain this as follows “FC works based on statistics, which maps the correlation between responses shown in the prefrontal cortex of a subject brain.” 8) In the discussion, Pages 13 and 14 (related to Figure 6), the authors state that donation has been associated with activation of the medial prefrontal cortex in other prior research, but that the activation of the medial prefrontal cortex “is not observed in our experiment.” (page 13, line 173). They go on to say that the observed deactivation of the entire PFC, including the medial PFC” (page 13, line 176). However, Figure 2 shows the placement of the fNIR spectroscopy channels, leads, and detectors, which appear to be mostly located in what is usually called the anterior cortex or frontal poles (BA 10). This includes anterior aspects of the medial PFC but it seems an overstatement to say that the entire PFC can be measured by such placement using fNIRS. Perhaps the authors could be more clear about what brain regions are actually measured in this experiment. � Response: We supplemented the manuscript as follows “The medial parts including the overall PFC associated with the compensation circuit are not activated in our experiment because it may or may not affect the neurological compensation circuits depending on the intention to donate.” 9) If the authors did record, subjects’ intentions prior to experimental manipulation, why didn’t they present any information about whether the baseline intentions were modified by their manipulation. That is, if someone set out to shop, was that changed by any of the experimental conditions? Or if they set out to donate, was that changed? If they had no preferred intention, did the intervention change that? Is the intention prior to experimental manipulation, a crude proxy for a measurement of their personality and whether they are self-centered, empathic, or charitable. This seems to be addressed to some extent by the results they report of short interviews of some donors after the experiment who reported that positive images had maximized their sympathy (page 12, line 149). Such a conclusion would require statistical evidence that positive images had changed intention to donate from its baseline following a planned intervention, but it is not clear that this is what the authors have reported. I cannot be sure because I still have questions about their design despite studying the paper carefully. This is an interesting study and I hope the authors will be able to answer my questions and obtain more data about who their subjects are in future work. As they say, the PFC has a key role in the regulation of emotional reactions, and its functional connectivity is strongly associated with individual differences in temperament and character (Zwir, I., Arnedo, J., Mesa, A. et al. Temperament & Character account for brain functional connectivity at rest. Mol Psychiatry (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-023-02039-6). � Response: The presurvey conducted in this experiment is a series of studies that lead to brain measurement experiments as soon as participants respond. As a result, it is carried out with the assumption that the subject's intention has not changed. Before experimental manipulation, it is a proxy for brain signal measurement by participants' propensity. This is supported by the results of short interviews with some donors after the experiments, showing that positive images maximize empathy. These short interviews are one of our detailed findings. However, Interviews were conducted with 15 donors at random among participants, and statistical results are unfortunately non-existent. Instead, we modified these as follows. “We conducted a short interview with fifteen donors randomly among participants and found that the positive images in this experiment maximized their sympathy” * Also, we cited the mentioned paper as a reference [12] to support for our research results. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303144.r002
22 Apr 2024 Decision Letter - Holger A. Rau, Editor Charitable crowdfunding donation-intention estimation depending on emotional project images using fNIRS-based functional connectivity PONE-D-23-35092R1 Dear Dr. Bak, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Holger A. Rau Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): I follow the recommendation of the reviewer to accept the article. However, please address a last clarification mentioned by the reviewer: "The authors have clarified the questions raised in my initial review adequately. However, on page 4, line 86 there refer to "in a month way". It is unclear what this means: does it mean they advertized for volunteers for one month? This can be clarified in preparing the article in its final form." You should do this before you submit your final version of the manuscript to the journal. Congrats and all the best! Holger 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 ******** 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: (No Response) ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 clarified the questions raised in my initial review adequately. Howevr, on page 4, line 86 there refer to "in a month way". It is unclear what this means: does it mean they advertized for volunteers for one month? This can be clarified in preparing the article in its final form. ****** 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 ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303144.r003
Formally Accepted
26 Apr 2024 Acceptance Letter - Holger A. Rau, Editor PONE-D-23-35092R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Bak, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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 customercare@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 Prof. Dr. Holger A. Rau Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303144.r004

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