Hearing-loss related variations in turn-taking time affect how conversations are perceived

Eline Borch Petersen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0325244

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 18, 2025
18 Mar 2025 Author Response https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325244.r001
22 Apr 2025 Decision Letter - Niravkumar Joshi, Editor PONE-D-25-12104Hearing-Loss Related Variations in Turn-Taking Time affect how Conversations are PerceivedPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Petersen, 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 06 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. 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, Niravkumar Joshi Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: The author is an employee at the hearing-aid manufacturing company WS Audiology Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. We note that you have indicated that there are restrictions to data sharing for this study. For studies involving human research participant data or other sensitive data, we encourage authors to share de-identified or anonymized data. However, when data cannot be publicly shared for ethical reasons, we allow authors to make their data sets available upon request. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Before we proceed with your manuscript, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., a Research Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board, etc.). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. You also have the option of uploading the data as Supporting Information files, but we would recommend depositing data directly to a data repository if possible. Please update your Data Availability statement in the submission form accordingly. 4. Please provide a complete Data Availability Statement in the submission form, ensuring you include all necessary access information or a reason for why you are unable to make your data freely accessible. If your research concerns only data provided within your submission, please write "All data are in the manuscript and/or supporting information files" as your Data Availability Statement. [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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No ****** 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 ****** 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: 1. Data Availability & Reproducibility • The paper states that data cannot be shared due to lack of informed consent. While this is understandable, the lack of even anonymized metadata or synthetic datasets limits reproducibility. o Recommendation: Consider sharing preprocessed or synthetic data demonstrating the manipulation pipelines, or detailed code for FTO manipulation. 2. Participant Demographics and Bias • All participants were employees of a hearing aid manufacturer (WS Audiology). This introduces potential bias due to professional exposure to hearing impairment. o Recommendation: Include a discussion in the limitations section about how this might affect generalizability of perceptual ratings. 3. Ecological Validity of Conversations • The use of short, task-based conversation snippets may not reflect real-life conversational dynamics. o Recommendation: Acknowledge that findings may differ for emotionally rich or spontaneous conversations. Templeton & Wheatley (2023) is rightly cited—consider expanding this discussion. 4. Gender Interaction (Ease-of-Following Ratings) • The observed gender effect lacks theoretical backing and is somewhat speculative. o Recommendation: Either minimize emphasis on this finding or contextualize it with prior literature on gender differences in speech perception, if available. 5. Terminology Clarity • The concept of "FTO" is central but could be better introduced. o Recommendation: A simple diagram early in the manuscript (e.g., in Figure 1) with speaker turns and FTO visualized would greatly help readers unfamiliar with this terminology Reviewer #2: In the present study, the author demonstrated that variations in turn-taking time are influenced by hearing loss. However, the manuscript requires significant revisions before it can be considered for publication in PLOS ONE.A major revision is recommended. 1.In the statistical analysis, the author does not consider the impact of medication and environmental factors. Please clarify why these variables were excluded and discuss their potential effects on the study outcomes. 2.In the Introduction section, the author is advised to clearly highlight the novelty of the present study in the context of existing literature. 3.The manuscript should address the influence of speech levels and signal-to-noise ratio on the results. 4.Avoid using bold and italic text in the manuscript. 5.Modify the reference style according to the journal guidelines. 6.Define abbreviations when they are first introduced in the manuscript. ****** 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 ******** [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.0325244.r002
Revision 1
1 May 2025 Author Response Dear Reviewers Thank you for your feedback on the manuscript “Hearing-Lo ss Related Variations in Turn-Taking Time affect how Conversations are Perceived”. A reoccurring comment relates to making the data publicly available and I realize that the community have different opinions regarding what is allowed to publish without the consent of the participants: Our lab s of the opinion that when participants are not informed and have consented to having their (anonymized) data made available, we cannot readily share it. However, as we see that it is increasingly becoming a requirement to publish data, we have chosen to make the data of the current study available via Zenodo (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.15307719.). Furthermore, I have updated the Competing Interests statement in the submission of the review. Below is a table of each comment and the I have addressed the individual comments and the alterations made to the resubmitted manuscript. I hope with the improvements made You will consider the manuscript for publication in PLOS One. Eline Borch Petersen Editor Comments: ------------------------------------------------- Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf REPLY The numbering of headings has been removed, the citation style changed, and the author affiliation has been updated. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: The author is an employee at the hearing-aid manufacturing company WS Audiology ------------------------------------------------- Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. REPLY Thank you, the I will add the statement to the Competing Interests statement ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- REVIEWER 1 ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Data Availability & Reproducibility :The paper states that data cannot be shared due to lack of informed consent. While this is understandable, the lack of even anonymized metadata or synthetic datasets limits reproducibility. Recommendation: Consider sharing preprocessed or synthetic data demonstrating the manipulation pipelines, or detailed code for FTO manipulation. REPLY The subjective rating data has been made available in anonymized form for via Zenodo (10.5281/zenodo.15307719.) together with an example script of how the FTOs are manipulated. The following has been added: “An example script of the Matlab-implementation of the manipulation steps can be found on Zenodo (10.5281/zenodo.15307719).” ------------------------------------------------- Participant Demographics and Bias: • All participants were employees of a hearing aid manufacturer (WS Audiology). This introduces potential bias due to professional exposure to hearing impairment. Recommendation: Include a discussion in the limitations section about how this might affect generalizability of perceptual ratings. REPLY Thanks for the comment, which I would normally be happy to comply with, however for this study I do not find the bias relevant. Firstly, although some employees are trained audiologists and/or have regular interaction with hearing impaired people, a vast majority of my colleagues in e.g. HR, finance and even R&D have never interacted professionally with a hearing-impaired person. Secondly, the third-party listeners were not informed of the experimental conditions tested and most of them are not aware of the underlying research I and others have conducted regarding the effect of hearing impairment on turn-taking timing. I can see that a bias can occur if the participants were actively participating in conversations or if the talkers in the conversations they were listening to displayed signs of being older or mishearing/understanding, however none of this was the case in the current study. In our study all talkers were younger and communicating in their native language in quiet. Hence, I cannot see to what extend being employed at WS Audiology would create a bias in the subjective ratings of the flow, naturalness and ease-of-following in the current study. ------------------------------------------------- 3. Ecological Validity of Conversations • The use of short, task-based conversation snippets may not reflect real-life conversational dynamics. o Recommendation: Acknowledge that findings may differ for emotionally rich or spontaneous conversations. Templeton & Wheatley (2023) is rightly cited—consider expanding this discussion. REPLY I have added details to the discussion on the differences between the conversation used by Templeton and the ones used in the current study. However, as the results are concurrent between the current study and Templeton, I see no reason to ´dive deeper into the difference in speech material, especially considering that Templeton manipulated only six short conversation segments in their study and that the attributes rated do not concur between our studies. Text added to the discussion: “When comparing between studies it should be noted that the conversations manipulated by Templeton consisted of six segments of 10 turns extracted from spontaneous conversations, whereas the 32 segments consisting of between 12-25 turns used in the current study were extracted from conversations driven by solving a task. Despite the difference in the nature of the conversations, the results from the current study, compliments the findings by Templeton that indeed, the FTO median times seem to affect the third-party perception of conversations more than the FTO variability.” ------------------------------------------------- 4. Gender Interaction (Ease-of-Following Ratings) • The observed gender effect lacks theoretical backing and is somewhat speculative. o Recommendation: Either minimize emphasis on this finding or contextualize it with prior literature on gender differences in speech perception, if available. REPLY I have tried to minimize the emphasis of the gender difference, exactly because it is not ‘easily’ explained. Although I have not been able to find theoretical backing for the effect, it is supported by statistical significance, which I personally think it weights higher than the presence of existing scientific evidence. I have removed the following passage from the discussion: “In the search of relevant scientific evidence, studies have focused on how gender affects active participation in conversations (being an interlocutor), but no studies have focused on how gender affects the evaluation and perception of conversations. Although a detailed description of the ease-of-following question was provided to the listeners, the gender difference suggests that there must be a gender-driven difference in how the ease-of-following is evaluated, to the extent that female listeners exhibit a ceiling effect in their ratings across all FTO conditions (Fig 2B)” ------------------------------------------------- 5. Terminology Clarity • The concept of "FTO" is central but could be better introduced. o Recommendation: A simple diagram early in the manuscript (e.g., in Figure 1) with speaker turns and FTO visualized would greatly help readers unfamiliar with this terminology REPLY Figure 1 has been altered to also include the FTO values of the original speech. Furthermore, the following elaboration has been added to the introduction: “When contributing to a conversation, the verbal utterance is often delivered in response to what your conversation partner has just said. However, when you start your turn is not completely without importance, which is what we will explore in this study. The timing of a turn is denoted a floor-transfers offsets (FTOs), i.e. the time between the conversation partner stop talking and you start, in other words, the floor is transferred from one talker to another. This FTO is measured in milliseconds and will be negative if you and your partner are talking in an overlap and positive if there is a pause between the conversation partner stops and you start” ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- REVIEWER 2 ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- 1.In the statistical analysis, the author does not consider the impact of medication and environmental factors. Please clarify why these variables were excluded and discuss their potential effects on the study outcomes. REPLY I am afraid I do not understand this comment. Is it referring to medication taken by the third-party listeners how are rating the conversations? I have never heard that medication should impact the subjective perception of speech. And if it does, I would assume it that the effect would not change throughout the experiment in which case adding subject as a random effect to the statistical model would account for the difference between participants. Which environmental factors is referred to here? Is it the environment that people are in when they perform the online experiment? Nevertheless, I have no information on either, so I unable to account for them in the statistical analysis. ------------------------------------------------- 2.In the Introduction section, the author is advised to clearly highlight the novelty of the present study in the context of existing literature. REPLY A sentence has been added to the introduction to further highlight the difference and novelty of this study: “The purpose of the current study is to investigate who naturally occurring variations in both FTO median, as well as the often overlooked, FTO IQR affects how conversations are perceived” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.The manuscript should address the influence of speech levels and signal-to-noise ratio on the results. REPLY: The rms of each talker within a conversation segment was equalized to ensure that the speech levels were the same across talkers and conversation segments. The participants were instructed and given an example of a conversation before the actual test, and asked to adjust the volume to a comfortable level, which I assume result in the speech being highly intelligible. I have no information regarding the absolute presentation level, as is the case with most online hearing experiments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.Avoid using bold and italic text in the manuscript. REPLY I have removed the bold writing when referring to figures and the tables, the remainder is kept to the improve readability of the text. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.Modify the reference style according to the journal guidelines. REPLY Thank you, the citation style and references to the figure are now changed -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.Define abbreviations when they are first introduced in the manuscript. REPLY I have gone through the manuscript again and cannot find any case where this is not done. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: ResposeToReviewers_PlosOne_Review1.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325244.r003
12 May 2025 Decision Letter - Niravkumar Joshi, Editor Hearing-Loss Related Variations in Turn-Taking Time affect how Conversations are Perceived PONE-D-25-12104R1 Dear Dr. Petersen, 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, Niravkumar Joshi 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: (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 #2: Partly ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 revised manuscript effectively addresses prior reviewer comments and adds important clarification, particularly through the addition of Figure 1 and clearer articulation of Floor Transfer Offset (FTO) concepts. The methodological approach is strong and reproducible, and the use of publicly available data and code strengthens transparency. Minor suggestions: Please ensure all figures are provided at the highest possible resolution for publication. Consider rewording a few phrases in the Results section for smoother flow. A more explicit statement on limitations (e.g., sample population from hearing aid company) would benefit the Discussion. Overall, this is a clear, well-structured, and methodologically sound article that adds value to the field of hearing-related communication studies Reviewer #2: (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 Reviewer #2: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325244.r004
Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Niravkumar Joshi, Editor PONE-D-25-12104R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Petersen, 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. Niravkumar Joshi Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325244.r005

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .