PONE-D-20-40129

Effect of colours on reading performance in children measured by the sensor hub: from the perspective of gender

PLOS ONE

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Murugappan M, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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: Comments to the author:

This study aims to investigate the gender differences in reading achievement, cognitive abilities and maturation process using HRV, EEG, and EDA. The study is interesting, and the paper is well-written. There are however some major areas that require the authors' attention.

My major concern is about processing of bio signals. Generally, the physiological signals are affected by noise (e.g., power line interference) and artifacts (body movements). Especially, when you record signals from children. I was unbale to find the details about signal pre-processing. How the noise and artifacts are removed? How the authors extracted the band power? What filter used to extract the EEG sub-frequency bands? Overall, no clear information about pre-processing.

Next, I was unable to see the information about data analysis i.e., data segmentation or the authors analyzed the whole recorded signals. state the outcome of this research in real time? What is the significant of this research? Include the limitations

Reviewer #2: The research article analyzes various physiological and eye gaze parameters to understand the gender differences in reading comprehension of elementary students. The differences is observed in many of the parameters and concurs with existing research. Colors do not seem to influence children with good proficiency.

Some comments

1. What is the novelty proposed in this research work? How are the differences in controversial reports filled in this work?

2. Studies on the influence of color on reading can be understood by different questionnaire based methods and statistical analysis of the same. Was any such study done or feedback obtained from the teachers to validate your results. Is there a need to use invasive methods such as EEG?

3. Why do you think that the delta waves show significant differences?

4. What would the proposed application of these finding. Proposing a few may provide more insight into the paper.

Reviewer #3: The problems statement is good. Some of the results are presented but the signal processing aspects are missing.

Major comments

1. The paper is poorly written. Please check typos and rewrite the paper in standard English

2. Signal processing techniques are missing in this paper. It should be described clearly with mathematical expressions, algorithms with optimal coding parameters and also results.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: M Sabarimalai Manikandan

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The effect of colour on reading performance in children, measured by a sensor hub: from the perspective of gender

PONE-D-20-40129R1

Dear Dr. Jakovljevic,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Murugappan M, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I may strongly suggest the authors to address the reviewer 3 suggestions in the camera-ready version of the manuscript.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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6. Review Comments to the Author

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

Reviewer #1: The authors addressed all the reviewer comments. I think the paper can be accepted for publication.

Reviewer #2: The authors have addresses the comments. The data collection methods have been justified. The authors have also included signal processing steps for better understanding.

Reviewer #3: Please improve the writing and presentation of this paper.

I would suggest the authors to highlight their statistical findings in the conclusion.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Jerritta Selvaraj

Reviewer #3: No