Long-term music instruction is partially associated with the development of socioemotional skills

Jed Villanueva; Beatriz Ilari; Assal Habibi

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0307373

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 31, 2023
21 Nov 2023 Decision Letter - Avanti Dey, Editor PONE-D-23-27763Long-term music instruction partially supports the development of socioemotional skillsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Villanueva, 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. The manuscript has been evaluated by three reviewers, and their comments are available below. They have raised a number of minor concerns, could you please carefully revise the manuscript to address all comments raised? Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 05 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. 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Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: “The Brain and Music Program (AH) at the Brain and Creativity Institute is supported by the GRoW at Annenberg Foundation (https://growannenberg.org/), the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association (https://www.laphil.com/), the Van Otterloo Family Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (grant 1809970-38-18, https://www.arts.gov/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” Please provide an amended statement that declares all the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. 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. 5. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: I Don't Know ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 is an important work. I appreciate the thorough analysis and interpretation. Line 55: Consider defining what constitutes as “early childhood” for the less informed readers Line 160: “In this paper, we refer to socioemotional skills as traits and capacities which contribute to an individual’s ability to maintain social relationships and respond to the emotions of others” - Include a citation given the general and/or current terminology misconceptions and variations. Suggestion: Kuther’s (2020) definition of socioemotional learning and development: “maturation of social and emotional functioning,” which would encompass your more specific definition. A more concise definition would be better, but I have seen this used before in music education literature. Kuther, T. L. (2020). Livespan development: Livesin context (2nd ed.). SAGE. Line 205: please clarify “analyzed anonymously” Line 209: change “is not relationship” to “was no relationship” Line 222: cite “El Sistema” for readers who are interested in knowing more Lines 237-243: Consider citing the method of providing stimulus (echoing back patterns) - was it Cohen or Rutkowski? Lines 237-243: add a small description of the melodies: “5-9 note melodies that were major or minor” Line 227: omit “a” in “a soccer program” if it was also community-based Line 268: revise to, “to which participants would then drum along.” Line 295: revise to, “to which they must respond yes or no.” Lines 389-400: Please include a sentence as to why d’s were not reported throughout. Line 440-441: “varied significantly” was confusing as a reader. Please rephrase language to align with other significant findings. Lines 518-525: Consider making this its own paragraph. Lines 522-523: This is the first mention that the children played viola and violin. Please include that detail in paragraph lines 220-225 Lines 524-525 implies that the children did not regularly sing in the El Sistema program. Consider mentioning around line 222 whether or not it’s known that students sing regularly, sometimes, or rarely in their program. Regarding line 550-551: Studies have supported that shorter patterns are less challenging to reproduce for young singers. See (for example): Sims, W. L., Moore, R. S., & Kuhn, T. L. (1982). Effects of female and male vocal stimuli, tonal pattern length, and age on vocal pitch-matching abilities of young children from England and the United States. Psychology of Music, Spec Its, 104-108. Nichols, B. E. (2016). Task-Based Variability in Children’s Singing Accuracy. Journal of Research in Music Education, 64(3), 309-321. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429416666054 Svec, C. L. (2018). The effects of instruction on the singing ability of children ages 5 to 11: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Music, 46(3), 326-339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735617709920 Lines 602-607: Overreaching interpretation of the data. Consider omitting and allowing the reader to consider the variety of reasons why children in the sports program shared more than children in the music program (outside the scope of the current paper). INCREDIBLY interesting, however! Reviewer #2: Please read the reviewer's comments uploaded as a Word document attachment. The conceptual framework should have been written under specific subtitles that define related terms and concepts of the study. Besides the aim of your study, please consider writing your research questions explicitly in items. For instance, 1. Research question 2. ……..etc. Please write this section in subtitles, e.g. Research instruments Data collection procedure Data analysis etc. Reviewer #3: Dear Jed, Hassal and Beatriz I enjoyed reading your paper. I can't imagine how much work it should be to lead a longitudinal study, and I am impressed each time I have the opportunity to read your work. What I missed most in reading this article was a clear conceptual framework presented early enough in the text to understand the measured concepts (sharing, empathy, sympathy, theory of mind, etc.). I also wondered about the validity of the tool used to measure sharing behaviors and would have liked to have more information about it. I don't have the necessary knowledge to evaluate your analyses, but I appreciate learning about the results. I also enjoyed the discussion in which you explained them. I wrote some comments, hoping they could help you follow my mind as I was reading the text. Thanks for the work you are doing. All the best for the next step, Take care, Aimée ****** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes: Aimée Gaudette-Leblanc ******** [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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-27763 (2).docx Attachment Submitted filename: Villanueva et al. (2023).pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307373.r001
Revision 1
12 Jan 2024 Author Response Response to Editor 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. ● We believe the manuscript meets the style requirements for PLOS ONE. 2. If you’ve not already done so, consider depositing your raw data in a repository to ensure your work is read, appreciated and cited by the largest possible audience. ● Our data has been uploaded to the Open Science Framework and is accessible at https://osf.io/y6dfc/. 3. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. ● Our amended Funding Statement is as follows: The Brain and Music Program (AH) at the Brain and Creativity Institute is supported by the GRoW at Annenberg Foundation (https://growannenberg.org/), the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association (https://www.laphil.com/), the Van Otterloo Family Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (grant 1809970-38-18, https://www.arts.gov/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. ● We have added captions for the supporting information located in the section titled “Supporting information” at the end of the manuscript. 5. 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. ● We have updated the reference list with additional sources offered by the reviewers. Primarily, we have added references to explain concepts such as El Sistema and psychological constructs such as cognitive and affective empathy, theory of mind, and trait and state empathy. In addition, we have renumbered the in-text citations to match with the new list of references. Response to Reviewer 1 Line 55: Consider defining what constitutes as “early childhood” for the less informed readers ● We’ve added UNESCO’s definition of early childhood (birth to eight years old). Line 160: “In this paper, we refer to socioemotional skills as traits and capacities which contribute to an individual’s ability to maintain social relationships and respond to the emotions of others” - Include a citation given the general and/or current terminology misconceptions and variations. Suggestion: Kuther’s (2020) definition of socioemotional learning and development: “maturation of social and emotional functioning,” which would encompass your more specific definition. A more concise definition would be better, but I have seen this used before in music education literature. Kuther, T. L. (2020). Livespan development: Livesin context (2nd ed.). SAGE. ● Using the suggestion provided by the reviewer, we’ve included Kuther’s definition of socioemotional learning and development which we agree encompasses our conceptualization of socioemotional development. Line 205: Please clarify “analyzed anonymously” ● We add that to analyze something anonymously means to access the data without any linking information to the participants’ identities. Line 209: Change “is not relationship” to “was no relationship” ● Agreed. Text has been altered following the reviewer’s suggestion. Line 222: cite “El Sistema” for readers who are interested in knowing more ● We’ve added the following additional resources on El Sistema: Frega, A. L., & Limongi, J. R. (2019). Facts and counterfacts: A semantic and historical overview of El Sistema for the sake of clarification. International Journal of Music Education, 37(4), 561-575. Majno, M. (2012). From the model of El Sistema in Venezuela to current applications: learning and integration through collective music education. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1252(1), 56-64. Uy, M. S. (2012). Venezuela's national music education program El Sistema: Its interactions with society and its participants' engagement in praxis. Music and Arts in Action, 4(1), 5-21. Lines 237-243: Cite the method of providing stimulus back (Cohen or Rutkowski?) ● We clarify that stimuli were provided back not necessarily following either the Cohen or Rutkowski method. Instead, vocally trained experimenters sang the neutral syllable “la” to the participant, and asked the participant to respond using “la” in return. Lines 237-243: Add a small description of the melodies (“5-9 note melodies that were major or minor”) ● Agreed. Melodies were clarified to have been 5-9 notes long in either major or minor modes. Line 227: Omit “a” in “a soccer program” if it was also community-based ● Agreed. Text has been altered following the reviewer’s suggestion. Line 268: revise to “”to which participants would then drum along.” ● Agreed. Text has been altered following the reviewer’s suggestion. Line 295: revise to, “to which they must respond yes or no.” ● Agreed. Text has been altered following the reviewer’s suggestion. Lines 389-400: Please include a sentence as to why d’s were not reported throughout. ● d’s were mistakenly unreported for group comparisons and have now been added throughout. Line 440-441: “varied significantly” was confusing as a reader. Please rephrase language to align with other significant findings ● We rephrased “varied significantly” to “was significantly predicted by” to follow the reporting of other significant effects. Lines 518-525: Consider making this its own paragraph ● Agreed, this section has been made its own paragraph. Lines 522-523: This is the first mention that the children played viola and violin. Please include that detail in paragraph lines 220-225 ● We’ve now included the requested information in the participants subsection. Lines 524-525 implies that the children did not regularly sing in the El Sistema program. Consider mentioning around line 222 whether or not it’s known that students sing regularly, sometimes, or rarely in the program ● We clarified that students received about 2 hours of choir training each week during their first year. Regarding lines 550-551: Studies have supported that shorter patterns are less challenging to reproduce for young singer ● The additional references offered by the reviewer have been incorporated into the paper. Lines 602-607: Overreaching interpretation of the data. Consider omitting and allowing the reader to consider the variety of reasons why children in the sports program shared more than children in the music program (outside the scope of the current paper). INCREDIBLY interesting, however! ● Agreed. This section has been removed from the manuscript Response to Reviewer 2 Too many keywords. Please consider writing specific keywords within the context. ● Agreed. We’ve changed the keywords to the following: El-sistema inspired program, middle childhood, longitudinal, pitch-matching, rhythmic entrainment, socioemotional development “Rhythmic” entrainment in keywords ● Agreed. “Rhythmic” has been added for clarification. Unclear whether or not systematic instruction in music theory, “technique”, etc. refers to instrumental playing or not ● We’ve added clarifying explaining systematic instruction refers to both instrumental and vocal training. Line 44: The conceptual framework should have been written under specific subtitles that define related terms and concepts of the study ● We’ve restructured the paper to begin with a section explaining the conceptual framework of the paper. In addition, we’ve added additional subtitles for each primary construct of interest (e.g., Pitch-matching and rhythmic entrainment development, socioemotional development, etc.) Lines 188-192: Besides the aim of your study, please consider writing your research questions explicitly in items. For instance, Research question …… etc. ● Agreed. We’ve explicitly included our research questions at the end of the introduction. Line 193: Please explain and define the methodology clearly. ● We believe that the methodology is explained and defined clearly in the following subsections of the Methods section. We choose to include the phrase “Data and code for analysis are available at https://osf.io/y6dfc/” at the beginning of the Methods section following reporting conventions for psychology papers. Line 221: “El Sistema” has to be described in concrete ● Agreed. Additional resources and information has been provided explaining the El Sistema approach. Line 235: Please write this section in subtitles, e.g. Research instruments, Data collection procedure, Data analysis, etc. ● We have reworded our current subtitles “Measures” and “Procedure” to “Research instruments” and “Data collection procedure”, respectively. Line 338: Data analysis should be described in the methodology section. In this section, consider writing the research outcomes of the analysis. ● We’ve restructured the paper so that the “Data analysis” section precedes “Results”. Lines 705: Must be written in APA style, last version. ● We disagree and believe the citation conventions of PLOS ONE follow the Vancouver style. Response to Reviewer 3 Line 23: What is the aim of this study ? What are the research questions? I would have appreciated a better understanding of the study's aims before learning about the population and the measurement tools used. ● Agreed. We include that our study aims to investigate the development of pitch-matching, rhythmic entrainment, and socioemotional development. We then continue explaining the study population and clarify the socioemotional skills of interest. Line 111: I would have been interested to know the age of the participants in this study (as you presented the age of the children participating in the two studies cited above). ● We’ve added that Hove and Risen’s (2009) population included college-aged participants. Line 118: In what context? ● We’ve added additional information explaining that Kirschner and Ilari’s (2014) spontaneous helping involved an experimenter accidentally dropping items and awaited a response from the participant. We’ve also included that the sharing task involved the experimenter implying that they’d like the participants to share their resources during a game. Line 123: socioemotional skills such as… ● We’ve included “sharing and emotion-recognition” as socioemotional skills of interest potentially related to pitch-matching and rhythmic entrainment. Line 153: Here, I wonder how old the population being studied in your study is (it was not clearly presented in the abstract... would it be a good idea to do so)? ● We’ve reworded the abstract to more explicitly state that the population was approximately 6.81 years old at baseline data collection. Line 157: In this study, Brazilian children shared significantly fewer cookies with E2 than Brazilian children. E2 was from Germany. Does culture (or familiarity) have to be considered when studying prosocial behaviors? Would it be relevant to address this point when comparing those two studies? ● Although we agree that culture is important to consider when studying prosocial behaviors, we can’t be certain that the inconsistent findings between Study 1 and Study 2 are a result of culture and choose not to make that claim. The populations in the two studies are not directly comparable, as Study 2 is specifically noted to be highly diverse and not a single homogenous group. As such, the incongruent culture effect seen in Study 1 does not necessarily apply to Study 2 and would require additional research. However, we add that culture is an important contextual factor to consider. Lines 159-161: I feel a bit lost ... I think that this section might have been presented earlier... Would it be relevant to present a conceptual framework in a section of the text? It would be necessary to refer to texts (articles, chapters) you have read to define this concept. ● Agreed. We’ve introduced a conceptual framework section at the beginning of the introduction to explain our constructs of interest more thoroughly. Lines 163-165: Reference? ● We’ve added the following references for theory of mind, affective and cognitive empathy, and empathic responding, respectively: Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4), 515-526. Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2006). Empathizing: neurocognitive developmental mechanisms and individual differences. Progress in Brain Research, 156, 403-417. Stern, J. A., Botdorf, M., Cassidy, J., & Riggins, T. (2019). Empathic responding and hippocampal volume in young children (Vol. 55, No. 9, p. 1908). American Psychological Association. Line 165: Add references ● We’ve added the following reference whose definition for socioemotional development we are following as a larger framework: Kuther, T. L. (2022). The Essentials of Lifespan Development: Lives in Context. SAGE Publications. Lines 168 and 174: This is not what you are measuring…. ● Although we did not measure self-esteem in our study, we believe that it is an important construct to consider when relating socioemotional development and music training. We do, however, add and acknowledge that self-esteem is not measured in our study. Lines 177-178: Would it be possible to be precise? Was this study about music education and prosociality - sharing or helping behaviors? This is what you are measuring… ● We add that Rickard, Bambrick, and Gill (2012) measured self-esteem, attitude towards school, social skills, depression, and more. Although not directly related to our study, we again, believe this history of investigating socioemotional skills and music education is important to consider. Lines 188-190: This should be in the abstract. ● Agreed. This has been added to the abstract. Line 196: How old were they at the moment of the data collection used in this study? ● We add clarifying language to state that participants were between 5.73 and 8.01 years old at baseline data collection. Lines 198-200: Information presented in this sentence doesn't seem related. Could you present them independently? ● Agreed. The sentence has been separated and presented independently. Line 219: During those years, did some of the children in the passive control group engage in sports programs? How did you know it? ● For all participants, we were aware of any additional extracurricular activities they engaged in through extensive parental interviews. As such, we know whether children in the passive control group engaged in sports or music programs, and if they did, discontinued participation in the study. Line 232: N = ? ● N = 13 has been added Line 233: N = ? ● N = 15 has been added Line 255: Could you remind us what was the mean age of the participants at this time of the study? ● We believe that the mean age of participants was clearly stated in the methods section. Line 257: Here again, I wonder what age are the children. ● We again believe that the participants’ ages were clearly stated in the methods section Line 276: Why and how did you adapt the "dictator game"? How did you measure the validity of this tool following the adaptation? ● We added additional information explaining that this variation of the dictator game was previously used and validated by the following study: ● Flook L, Goldberg SB, Pinger L, Davidson RJ. Promoting prosocial behavior and self-regulatory skills in preschool children through a mindfulness-based Kindness Curriculum. Dev Psychol. 2015 Jan;51(1):44-51. doi: 10.1037/a0038256. Line 289: This variable is not clearly defined previously. ● Agreed. We have now defined “empathic responding” in the introduction as the capacity to understan Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307373.r002
8 May 2024 Decision Letter - Vanessa Carels, Editor PONE-D-23-27763R1Long-term music instruction partially supports the development of socioemotional skillsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Villanueva, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 21 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'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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, Vanessa Carels Staff 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: We note that one or more reviewers has recommended that you cite specific previously published works. As always, we recommend that you please review and evaluate the requested works to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. It is not a requirement to cite these works. We appreciate your attention to this request. [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 #4: (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 #4: No ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 Reviewer #4: 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 #4: 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: This paper was in good shape through the last revise/resubmit. All requirements above had been met. Reviewer #4: The authors have addressed most of the detailed comments and suggestions raised by the reviewers of the first submission. I will only focus on major issues that in my view deserve more emphasis and discussion: - It is difficult to draw conclusions regarding music training effects from this study because children self-selected into training (i.e., predispositions are likely to have played a role), and the music training program was more intense (with more hours per week) than the control training. - The title suggests a causal effect of music training on socioemotional skills that is not supported by the data. If I read the results correctly, for no measure the music group improved more over time than the controls groups. In fact, the opposite was found for sharing. - The Abstract needs a conclusion. - There are several missing meta-analyses and reviews of the literature that are directly relevant for the framing and discussion of this study. For example: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X22000057 https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-032323-051354 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17540739211022035 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X16300641 ****** 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 #4: 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.0307373.r003
Revision 2
19 Jun 2024 Author Response Response to Editor We have evaluated the works requested by reviewer 4 and have incorporated them into our manuscript. Response to Reviewer 4 It is difficult to draw conclusions regarding music training effects from this study because children self-selected into training (i.e., predispositions are likely to have played a role), and the music training program was more intense (with more hours per week) than the control training. • We agree that the interpretation for this study is difficult given selection bias and genetic predispositions. To remedy this, we re-emphasized the potential presence for these two in the discussion. The title suggests a causal effect of music training on socioemotional skills that is not supported by the data. If I read the results correctly, for no measure the music group improved more over time than the controls groups. In fact, the opposite was found for sharing. • We modified the title to clarify that the results of this study are not causal but represent associations. Nonetheless, the music group did improve in their emotion-matching ability relative to the sports group, so this point was made clearer in the results and discussion. The Abstract needs a conclusion. • The abstract was modified to include a conclusion and fit within the 300-word limit There are several missing meta-analyses and reviews of the literature that are directly relevant for the framing and discussion of this study • We’ve incorporated the recommended articles into the introduction and discussion, briefly covering music training’s association and lack thereof with transfer effects. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307373.r004
4 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Laura Morett, Editor Long-term music instruction is partially associated with the development of socioemotional skills PONE-D-23-27763R2 Dear Dr. Villanueva, 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, Laura Morett Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): The most recent version of the manuscript addresses R4's remaining comments sufficiently. Therefore, I am pleased to accept the manuscript for publication in PLOS One. 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 #4: 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 #4: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #4: 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 #4: 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 #4: 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 #4: The revised version of the manuscript is more accurate and the authors have addressed all my comments. ****** 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 #4: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307373.r005
Formally Accepted
9 Jul 2024 Acceptance Letter - Laura Morett, Editor PONE-D-23-27763R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Villanueva, 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 Dr. Laura Morett Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307373.r006

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