PONE-D-24-09867Validation of new Tablet-based Problem-Solving Tasks in Primary School StudentsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Schäfer,

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 study is technically sound and has major impact for an evolving field combining computer science and behavioral skills in young pupils.

Please address all the comments raised by the reviewers whom recommended minor revision. In particular language editing (proof-read by a native English speaker) and clarify your choice on the population (homogeneity).

Good luck and good continuation in this field.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 23 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.

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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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Adel Tekari, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

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2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Further Education, Research and Culture, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The funders awarded ML and JK (without grant number) and did not influence study or publication decisions.

https://bm.rlp.de”

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. 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.

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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 authors present an approach for evaluating technical problem solving abilities in 6-8 years old elementary school children. The test, available in analog form, has been transferred to a tablet application, and the paper compares the two applications and related cognitive tasks (language, reasoning and another problem solving task), and the 2 forms of the problem solving test .

215 children voluntarily took part in the evaluation. The statistical methods for comparing the various tests are correlation studies and structural equation modeling. The results suggest that transfer of the problem solving task from analog to digital was successful .

The paper is well structured, understandably written, cites abundant relevant literature and includes clear result tables and figures. There are 3 comments that should be addressed:

the text - although understandable - should be revised by a native speaker or a proof reading service because some expressions and wordings could be improved. Suggestions can be given.

it is not clear, why only voluntary pupils participated in the study because this procedure could produce a selection bias, more technically gifted and computer affine children would be more likely to comprehend the computerized task than less technically gifted pupils. This could lead to the erroneous conclusion that less computer affine children could less successfully comprehend the tablet task and thus contribute to the erroneous conclusion that both tests may be used interchangeably, thus influencing its validity for all school children of the given age range. This could have been avoided by selecting a less homogeneous group. I would therefore suggest to include this possible bias in the limitations statement.

the third objection is that the order of test application was the same for all tests, analog before tablet. This could also lead to a selection bias because the analog task could be a training task thus facilitating the reasoning abut the given problem. This should also be mentioned in the limitation studies.

Reviewer #2: Although the benefits of digital problem-solving assessment have been known for a long time ,

so far ,only very few digital assessment tools for children are available. This work would therefore be of interest and would have an impact and a beneficial effect on the digital assessment of problem-solving skills in children aged 06 to 08.

the conclusion answers the questions and meets the objective of the study

the methodology is rigorous, with good statistical analysis

I do have a few comments on the methodology: I wonder why you chose not to give more information on the study population: gender, school level, development, management of emotions etc .. knowing that all these factors can influence problem solving.

So we don't know what type of population you've chosen and whether it's homogeneous or not

you also chose to make correlations with language and reasoning ability, but we also know that non-verbal intelligence ,self regulation and executive functions have a major influence on problem-solving skills.

have you taken these parameters into account?

if not, try to mention it during your discussion and in your conclusion and recommendations.

best regards

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Christian Popow, MD

Reviewer #2: Yes: Hela Slama

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PONE-D-24-09867R1Validation of new Tablet-based Problem-Solving Tasks in Primary School StudentsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Schäfer,

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 conduct some minor changes according to reviewer's comments.

Good luck.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 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. 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,

Adel Tekari, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: Interesting and innovative research

thank you for the changes made and added to the paper

good luck

Reviewer #3: The authors provide sufficient evidence to validate a digital version of an analog problem-solving task for primary school children. The practical relevance of their contribution is contextualized in the current literature, pointing to the significant advantages of digital platforms compared to analog formats. The methodological approach was rigorous enough. Although I have some minor observations and suggestions mostly regarding methods, overall, I think that the manuscript meets the criteria to be published in Plos One.

My commentaries are:

- In Material and Methods, the description of the Language and Reasoning tasks (page 10 of the revised version) should indicate that they were applied in digital format. This is not deduced from the descriptions offered, and it matters for reproducibility and because the authors indeed allude to a difference in format to explain the lack of predictive relation between Reasoning and the analog GTT tasks.

- In the description of the Carrousel task (page 10), the rationale and steps of the second phase are not immediately clear. It is not so common in diagnostic tasks to include probing questions during the task itself (after having had a familiarization or a practice phase). I suggest including some indication about this (especially if the author's goal is that the community can use their tasks upon the information given in this manuscript). Also, if the authors deem it useful to code subject's responses on this phase to complement the assessment, this should be pointed out.

- In the Discussion, the authors suggest that the absence of a link between Reasoning and analog GTT performance could have been due to a difference in the tasks' formats (page 17 of the revised version). While I agree that this is plausible, it may lead to think then that the observed relation between Reasoning and digital GTT might have resulted from their shared format (and not because of an underlying cognition). As the reasoning process in the GGT tasks was not measured here (only the quality outcome) a suggestion for a future exploration of these intermediate steps and cognitive tasks may help.

- In the Participants section, as socioeconomic information was not registered, in addition to the statement of no exclusion criteria (page 6), I suggest adding that the sampling area had a heterogeneous population (to compensate for this limitation).

- Regarding software availability, it would be important to know if the authors plan to provide access to their developed tool to the community.

Minor regarding format:

- In the Results, the format to present correlation coefficients in the text, separating them by "/" should be checked (pages 13 and 14 of the revised version).

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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.

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Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: Yes: Hela Slama

Reviewer #3: Yes: Camilo Gouet

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[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.

Validation of new Tablet-based Problem-Solving Tasks in Primary School Students

PONE-D-24-09867R2

Dear Dr. Schäfer,

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,

Adel Tekari, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors addressed all the reviewers' comments and no additional action is required. Congratulations for the paper.

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 #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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 #3: (No Response)

**********

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 #3: (No Response)

**********

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 #3: (No Response)

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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 #3: Yes: Camilo Gouet

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