PONE-D-24-15530Limited carry-over effects of socioemotional manipulations on subsequent unrelated memory tasksPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ford,

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.

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ACADEMIC EDITOR: The decision for a major revision was made based on the reviewers' comments. Both reviewers believe the article has the potential for publication with appropriate revisions. They have provided recommendations to enhance the article's solidity. Please proceed with these revisions to improve your article and meet the publication criteria.

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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[ This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1823795) to EAK and JHF. The authors would like to thank Grace Serpe, Erin Davies, and Rachel Furlan helping to score behavioral data. All data (4 files) are available from the OSF database (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/3P6MA).]

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Additional Editor Comments:

The decision for a major revision was made based on the reviewers' comments. Both reviewers believe the article has the potential for publication with appropriate revisions. They have provided recommendations to enhance the article's solidity. Please proceed with these revisions to improve your article and meet the publication criteria.

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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

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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: The article "Limited Carry-Over Effects of Socioemotional Manipulations on Subsequent Unrelated Memory Tasks" explores the hypothesis that performing socioemotional tasks before encoding or retrieval can improve performance in subsequent unrelated memory tasks. Conducted with a large and diverse sample of adults, the study includes two online experiments. In the first experiment, participants completed memory tasks with pairs of neutral words and images after being subjected to different socioemotional manipulations (self-reference, music, or autobiographical memory retrieval) or a control condition. In the second experiment, the procedure was similar but used pairs of emotional words and images (positive or negative). The results showed that socioemotional manipulations did not significantly improve subsequent memory, suggesting that these interventions may not be effective in enhancing memory in unrelated tasks. However, exploratory analyses indicated that certain individuals, such as those who elaborated on specific autobiographical memories, might benefit from these manipulations, highlighting the need for future research to investigate specific conditions and individual characteristics that might moderate these effects.

I think that after an improvement of the article, it may be accepted for publication. I left my suggestions below.

1. In the introduction, there could be a clearer connection between the introduction and the specific objectives of the study.

2. The introduction could be more direct in pointing out the specific gap in the literature that the study addresses. For example, explicitly state how the current research goes beyond previous studies on socioemotional memory in the elderly.

3. In the "Methods" section, the description of the participants is detailed. However, it would be useful to include more information about age distribution and other important demographic characteristics, if possible.

4. Include more details about the specific procedures of the socioemotional manipulations. For example, describe exactly how participants were instructed to perform the self-reference and autobiographical memory tasks.

5. It would be helpful to add a figure or flowchart to illustrate the flow of the experiment.

6. The results are presented clearly but could benefit from additional tables and figures to visualize the data.

7. The exploratory analyses are well addressed, but there are many details. A more concise synthesis of the main findings could help with readability.

8. The limitations of the study are discussed, but it would be useful to add more suggestions for future research.

9. The presented figures should be of better quality.

10. More recent bibliographic references should be added.

11. An expanded version of the conclusion should be made.

Reviewer #2: I found the article entitled “Limited carry-over effects of socioemotional manipulations on subsequent unrelated memory tasks” very interesting. The article is interesting because it deals with a timely topic and because it presents some relevant results.

The authors adhered to the IMRAD structure, which is appropriate for a PLOS ONE article; however, the introduction heading is missing.

The conclusion is too brief. I suggest focusing on four main points to enhance it. First, highlight the contributions to the theory, specifying the novel and original insights your article adds. Second, discuss the practical contributions, detailing how your findings are relevant to practitioners in the field. Third, address the limitations of your research (this is already mentioned, but it should be included in the conclusion). Finally, provide suggestions for future research. The conclusion currently feels imbalanced compared to the other sections. These are only suggestions, and you can make adjustments as long as you expand the conclusion and emphasize the research contributions.

From a theoretical perspective, the article presents limitations that need a thorough revision. Specifically, the references include only sources from 2022 onwards, with only one article from 2022. It is essential to include articles from 2023 and 2024 that are currently missing. Resolving this issue is necessary for the article to be published.

Although I agree that the authors have done an excellent job, there is a lack of theoretical support. At the end of the article, the authors should focus on the contributions, as this is where readers will concentrate the most.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Limited carry-over effects of socioemotional manipulations on subsequent unrelated memory tasks

PONE-D-24-15530R1

Dear Dr. Ford,

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.

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Kind regards,

Chongzeng Bi

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #2: 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

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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: I would like to thank the authors for effectively addressing the comments and suggestions made during the first round of review. After a careful analysis of the revisions, I am pleased to see that the authors have addressed the raised concerns, significantly improving the manuscript.

The authors have made the necessary revisions and I recommend that the article be accepted for publication, considering that the requested revisions have been satisfactorily incorporated and the manuscript now presents robust and well-founded content.

Reviewer #2: I would like to thank you for your hard work and effort in addressing all my comments. Congratulations on meeting the rigorous standards of PLOS ONE!

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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: Yes: João Carlos Gonçalves dos Reis

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