-->PONE-D-25-32174

Perceptual learning mechanisms with single-stimulus exposure

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. SANJUAN ARTEGAIN,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. I am very grateful to the reviewer who gave such thorough feedback (below). Unfortunately one other reviewer was not able to complete their review, but I have myself had a careful read of the manuscript.  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.

==============================-->

In general the introduction should be more succinct, currently it is far too long and unwieldy. Please follow the reviewers advice on what can be left out and what should be included, I agree with these comments.

-->As indicated by the reviewer, error bars should be included and within-subject error bars are particularly useful in this context. You can easily calculate within-subject error bars, see this link for a very useful step by step guide: https://www.cogsci.nl/blog/tutorials/156-an-easy-way-to-create-graphs-with-within-subject-error-bars

It is a concern that colours were not fully counterbalanced - please explain this decision in the methods and  acknowledge this as appropriate throughout the manuscript.

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

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 22 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,

Poppy Watson

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 your Competing Interests section:

[No competing interest to declare].

Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now

This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. When completing the data availability statement of the submission form, you indicated that you will make your data available on acceptance. We strongly recommend all authors decide on a data sharing plan before acceptance, as the process can be lengthy and hold up publication timelines. Please note that, though access restrictions are acceptable now, your entire data will need to be made freely accessible if your manuscript is accepted for publication. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If you are unable to adhere to our open data policy, please kindly revise your statement to explain your reasoning and we will seek the editor's input on an exemption. Please be assured that, once you have provided your new statement, the assessment of your exemption will not hold up the peer review process.

4. Please amend the manuscript submission data (via Edit Submission) to include author María del Carmen Sanjuán.

5. Please amend your authorship list in your manuscript file to include author MARIA DEL CARMEN SANJUAN ARTEGAIN.

6. Your abstract cannot contain citations. Please only include citations in the body text of the manuscript, and ensure that they remain in ascending numerical order on first mention.

7. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section.

8. We note that Figure 1 in your submission contains copyrighted image. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright.

We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:

1. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 1 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license.

We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text:

“I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.”

Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission.

In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].”

2. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only.

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

[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: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

-->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

**********

-->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

**********

-->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 study tests two explanations for the phenomenon that preexposure to a compound test stimulus (BX) alone suffices for learning (or reduces generalized aversion), after conditioning with another stimulus, AX. The mechanisms considered are retrospective reevaluation (RR) and restoration of perceptual effectiveness (RPE). Under RR, B comes to inhibits the outcome; under RPE, B becomes more salient or distinct from the conditioned compound. Two experiments were conducted using dichromatic symbol compounds in a video game, with suppression of a shooting response as the dependent measure. In both experiments, compounds BX and DX were pre-exposed, followed by conditioning with AX and AY. In Experiment 1, a summation test was conducted with compounds BY and DY, and BY passed the test. In Experiment 2, a retardation test was conducted with compounds BW and DW, and BW failed the test. The authors conclude that the results support RPE - or enhanced salience of B - as the learning mechanism.

This could be an interesting and useful paper provided some changes are made.

Major comments

1. Length and clarity of introduction: The introduction should be reduced substantially. At present, it reads more like the first draft of a master’s thesis than a manuscript for publication. The phenomenon being studied and the competing hypotheses need to be explained earlier and more clearly and concisely. The purpose of the study should be stated in 4-5 pages total, focusing directly on: the effect of interest, the competing explanations (RR vs. RPE), whether either experiment is a replication of earlier work or whether both are novel. Other details - Gibson’s ideas and mediated learning, for example - can be omitted.

2. Relation to human perceptual learning literature: The study needs to be more clearly situated within the context of human perceptual learning, in addition to or instead of the animal learning studies. For example, Lavis et al (2011) showed that exposure to a single element can enhance discrimination. Is this similar to the effect reported here? If not, please clarify the differences. Mitchell & Hall (2014) provide a review of the issues raised here, and other work by Dwyer’s group also should be cited.

3. Configural hypothesis (sections 2.1 and 2.2): The description of the configural hypothesis is not clear enough. Please state explicitly what predictions this hypothesis makes for each experiment, and how those predictions differ from the RR and RPE accounts. Please add all predictions to Table 1.

4. Stimulus salience: Cue A was always red, which is a particularly salient colour. This raises the question of whether the effects reported might have been different if A were less salient. The colour of A should have been counterbalanced across subjects. Please discuss this as a potential limitation of the results.

Further comments:

Abstract and general

The purpose of CY is unclear. If CY wasn’t relevant to these findings, please remove it from the abstract and elsewhere.

Introduction:

- Pages 10-11, lines 205-218: confusing and misplaced. If the results can be explained ‘without appeal to configuration’, why not say this earlier where you explain latent inhibition? Please clarify.

- Page 11, line 223 onwards: confusing. Does blocking contradict the configural explanation? If not, why isn’t the configural account sufficient?

- Page 13, line 270 onwards: When AX and BX are exposed in alternation, you state that A and B’s effectiveness is recovered. This seems the opposite of the mutual inhibition proposed by McLaren. Please explain.

- Page 15, lines 305 onwards: In the food+tone example, please add the compound stimulus notations (BX, AX etc) so as to compare with previous examples

- Page 15 lines 314 onwards: from here onwards, I ceased to follow the logic. Please delete, or reduce and simplify.

Methods

- The description of methods and the experiment (pages 18-28) is repetitive and could be shortened

- Table 1 should include predictions for both experiments under RR, RPE, and the configural hypothesis

- Page 20, line 426-428: The sentence “…better reducing suppression controlled by X by way of inhibition” is difficult to understand. Please rephrase.

Results

- Please explain the suppression ratio measure in a bit more detail

- Figures 2-4. Error bars should be shown regardless of clutter. To reduce clutter, you could add them to the first and last symbols only. Or, you could plot within-subjects error bars (Cousineau, 2005), which would be appropriate here and typically smaller.

- Experiment 1a: Lines 644-655 say that passing the summation test indicates RE, but the discussion says it could indicate RE or RPE. Please clarify.

- Experiment 1a: Please comment on performance differences between BX vs. BY. It appears suppression was different in those conditions. Does this have any implications?

- Experiment 1b: The main effect of compound type is small, and likely emerges because of the power of the repeated-measures analysis. The discussion describes this as a clear effect, which is overstated. Please modify.

Discussion

- Expand the discussion of human perceptual learning studies (e.g., refs below)

- Discuss the potential caveat of red A's salience

- Page 34, line 709 onwards: The explanation of salience modulation is unclear. Please clarify

- Page 35: This section is unclear and redundant with previous sections and not well tied to human learning studies

- Page 36, lines 746-748: What is the evidence that “…differential latent inhibition…undoubtedly contribute[s] to perceptual learning effects” in humans?

References

1. Lavis, Y., Kadib, R., Mitchell, C., & Hall, G. (2011). Memory for, and salience of, the unique features of similar stimuli in perceptual learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 37(2), 211.

2. Mitchell C & Hall G. (2014). Can theories of animal discrimination explain perceptual learning in humans? Psychological Bulletin, 140(1), 283-307.

3. Cousineau D. Confidence intervals in within-subjects designs: A simpler solution to Loftus and Masson’s method. Tutorial in Quantitative Methods for Psychology 2005;1(1):4–45.

**********

-->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

**********

[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.

-->PONE-D-25-32174R1-->-->Perceptual learning mechanisms with single-stimulus exposure-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. SANJUAN ARTEGAIN,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to PLOS ONE and for clarifying some of the earlier points. I am pleased to say that your manuscript will be accepted for publication after some minor edits are made. Please see the comments of the reviewer below - it is also very important that you carefully read the manuscript for small grammatical errors because PLOS ONE does not copyedit manuscripts before publication.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 01 2026 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 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,

Poppy Watson

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Journal Requirements:

1. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

2. 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.

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: (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

**********

-->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: The revision of the manuscript is adequate and the authors have addressed most comments. A few remaining points:

1. Please correct grammatical errors and typos throughout. (e.g., line 87 promotes; line 100 awkward; line 190 that; line 542 might commanded, line 567 awkward clause at end of sentence; several more in discussion and other parts of the manuscript)

2. Line 151: The RPE is mentioned here for the first time, without explanation or prior definition (abstract doesn’t count). Please fix.

3. Figure captions for figures 3 and 4 say error bars are omitted, even though error bars are now included.

4. Around line 534, the authors could acknowledge that the effect of compound type in Experiment 1b is small (in addition to ‘direct’) to cohere better with the results section (which says ‘slightly greater’), and lines 596-97 in the discussion, where potential reasons are given for the small effect size.

**********

-->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

**********

[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.]

To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

You may also use PLOS’s free figure tool, NAAS, to help you prepare publication quality figures: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-tools-for-figure-preparation.

NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

-->

Perceptual learning mechanisms with single-stimulus exposure

PONE-D-25-32174R2

Dear Dr. SANJUAN ARTEGAIN,

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. For questions related to billing, please contact billing support .

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,

Poppy Watson

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: