Changes in the relationship between attachment and emotion recognition from adolescence to adulthood

Katalin Oláh

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0325205

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 11, 2024
11 Sep 2024 Author Response https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325205.r001
12 Mar 2025 Decision Letter - Sanjoy Kumer Dey, Editor PONE-D-24-36706Changes in the relationship between attachment and emotion recognition from adolescence to adulthoodPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Oláh, 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 Apr 26 2025 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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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 ****** 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 ****** 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 a behavioral study investigating the relationship between attachment and emotion recognition in adolescents and adults. This is an interesting study and I only have a few minor comments to help clarify a few aspects of the study. In the abstract, “we present findings …” should be rephrased as the study is not just on “young adults and adolescents” as the age range is up to 50 years old. In my opinion, the introduction is too long and expands too much about early childhood and infants which makes it confusing since it is not the purpose of the study. But I leave that to the author and editor to decide whether to shorten it. Did the author consider the interaction between age and sex as a predictor (and if not, why not?)? Especially in the adult group. Also, there is a large discrepancy in sample size between males and females in the adult group. Could that reflect a bias in recruitment? This should be acknowledged as a limitation, or discussed as a potential explanation of differences between the adolescents and adults. In this context, was age correlated with the different variables tested? A supplementary Figure displaying the distribution of sex by age might be informative. Is there any information about mental health / neurodevelopmental disorders for the participants? Were any participants autistic (for instance) as it could significantly impact their capacity to identify emotions. This information should be clarified. In S1_File, in the neutral emotion section, cautious is listed twice. Reviewer #2: The manuscript addresses an important avenue of research and the analyses are robust. The results will contribute to the literature on relationships between attachment and emotion recognition in different developmental stages. I commend the authors. ****** 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: Yes: Ali Evren Tufan ******** [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.0325205.r002
Revision 1
25 Apr 2025 Author Response Responses to Reviewer 1 In the abstract, “we present findings …” should be rephrased as the study is not just on “young adults and adolescents” as the age range is up to 50 years old. Thank you for the suggestion, the adjustment has been made. In my opinion, the introduction is too long and expands too much about early childhood and infants which makes it confusing since it is not the purpose of the study. But I leave that to the author and editor to decide whether to shorten it. I agree with the reviewer that the first part of the introduction was lengthy, therefore I have shortened it somewhat (see paragraph 1). However, in order to shed some light on how attachment may play a role in adult theory of mind and emotion recognition specifically, it is important to understand the mechanisms that may contribute to this potential link. Since attachment characteristics are rooted in early experiences, I believe it is necessary to discuss these potential mechanisms from a developmental point of view. Therefore, the sections that present how biases in information processing may appear as a result of attachment insecurity have not been deleted or shortened. Did the author consider the interaction between age and sex as a predictor (and if not, why not?)? Especially in the adult group. I thank the reviewer for the suggestion. Indeed, interaction terms would be interesting to add to the analyses; however, it is unfortunately not possible with the current dataset as detecting interactions in the regression models requires a significantly larger sample size (for discussions on this see for example Leon, A. C., & Heo, M. (2009). Sample Sizes Required to Detect Interactions between Two Binary Fixed-Effects in a Mixed-Effects Linear Regression Model. Computational statistics & data analysis, 53(3), 603–608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csda.2008.06.010 or https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2018/03/15/need16/ ). In addition, I have run a power analysis for the interaction term with standard parameters (effects size: 0.2; alpha=0.05.; power=0.8, 1 covariate (age) and 2 groups (for sex)), and it resulted in a required sample size of 416 which is signficantly higher than my own. Thus, this particular study is underpowered to reliably test these effect. Nonetheless, I trust that in spite of this, the reviewer will find that the current results are still sound enough to publish - with acknowledging the limitations, of course. To ensure clarity on this issue, I have extended the discussion (see next point also). I would also like to point out that although the age range is rather wide, the majority of the participants fall at the lower end of the age scale (see also below). Also, there is a large discrepancy in sample size between males and females in the adult group. Could that reflect a bias in recruitment? This should be acknowledged as a limitation, or discussed as a potential explanation of differences between the adolescents and adults. Indeed, recruitment differed for the adult and the adolescent samples. Adolescents were recruited in high schools and were tested in their own classrooms, thus gender distribution here largely resembles that of the classes themselves. Adults, on the other hand, were recruited through a university course for credit. These participants were thus university students. Although recruitment did not limit the faculties from which students may have applied (with the only exception that psychology students could only participate if they were in their freshman year), with this method of recruitment, we generally end up with an uneven distribution of females and males. The discussion has been extended to reflect on this issue (lines 555-561.). In this context, was age correlated with the different variables tested? A supplementary Figure displaying the distribution of sex by age might be informative. Thank you for the suggestion, another Supplemantary file (S6) have been added to show the distribution of participants by age and gender. Moreover, both for adolescents and adults zero-order correlations involving age have been calculated and reported in the preliminary analysis sections (lines 270-271 and 400-403). Is there any information about mental health / neurodevelopmental disorders for the participants? Were any participants autistic (for instance) as it could significantly impact their capacity to identify emotions. This information should be clarified. During recruitment, we explicitly stated that a lack of any psychiatric diagnosis was a precondition for participation. Since it would be difficult to unambiguously define conditions that do not affect such social cognitive skills, we felt it was necessary to extend this constraint to any diagnosis. A sentence has been added to the methods section to make this explicit in the manuscript (lines 192-193). In S1_File, in the neutral emotion section, cautious is listed twice. Some of the expressions may appear multiple times in the file since the classification for valence was done on each item by presenting both the verbal expression and the picture. Since there are some items in the RMET with the same emotion expression as the correct choice, these appear separately in this document. Response to Reviewer 2 I am grateful for the kind words on our work and the manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325205.r003
9 May 2025 Decision Letter - Sanjoy Kumer Dey, Editor Changes in the relationship between attachment and emotion recognition from adolescence to adulthood PONE-D-24-36706R1 Dear Dr.Katalin Oláh 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, Sanjoy Kumer Dey, M.D 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 ******** 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 ****** 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: (No Response) ****** 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.0325205.r004
Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Sanjoy Kumer Dey, Editor PONE-D-24-36706R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Oláh, 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 You will receive further instructions from the production team, including instructions on how to review your proof when it is ready. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few days 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. Sanjoy Kumer Dey Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325205.r005

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