Beyond coincidence: An investigation of the interplay between synchronicity awareness and the mindful state

Eyal Rosenstreich; Pninit Russo-Netzer; Tamar Icekson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0307443

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 28, 2023
6 Mar 2024 Decision Letter - Vilfredo De Pascalis, Editor PONE-D-23-43024Beyond coincidence: An Investigation of the Interplay Between Synchronicity Awareness and the Mindful State.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Rosenstreich, 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. The Reviewers both indicate that the study is novel and useful for growing the research field of mindfulness. However, they also raised major and minor issues that the authors are invited to address with a substantial revision. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 20 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. 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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. Additional Editor Comments: The Reviewers both indicate that the study is novel and useful for growing the research field of mindfulness. However, they also raised major and minor issues that the authors are invited to address with a substantial revision. [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: 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: No Reviewer #2: No ****** 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: No 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: PLOS review 2024 2 26 Here the authors sought to validate a novel scale (SAMD) aimed at characterizing the mechanisms underlying synchronicity awareness, a ubiquitous yet understudied aspect of conscious experience, and probe its relation to mindfulness. Strengths: The authors make a good case for the importance of synchronicity for mental health and wellbeing , i.e. “ it may be suggested that being aware of our present-moment experiences enhances our ability to facilitate a dialogue between our internal world and external environment and to make sense of random and unexpected information and events in individuals' everyday lives in natural settings. “ This study is novel and will be useful for the growing field of mindfulness studies. The study is well powered, and the analyses seem clear, justified and well-performed. Weaknesses: I have several issues with the manuscript in its current form that should be addressed. Furthermore, it is hampered by a lack of clarity and care in the writing and should undergo an in-depth round of editing before resubmission. General points: The study should be framed as one of bringing an aspect of mindfulness, “synchronicity awareness” in relation to other more studied aspects of the greater construct of mindfulness. Otherwise the rationale is not immediately clear from the abstract. The reason for a dominantly caucasian sample is unclear (given the highly diverse populations available in US and UK), and will limit generalizability. I would strongly recommend recruiting more non-caucasian participants. The amount of compensation received by participants is not mentioned. Points for improvement in writing (due to the unfortunately high number of incidences of typos, grammatical errors, and awkward or disorganized composition, I could not provide a full list. Please revise considerably before submitting): P.2, L.3 should read” it has scarcely been examined scientifically and little is known…” P.2, L.6 should read “engaged in an online survey…” P.3, L. 2 should read “mindful state is characterized” P.3. L.5-6 this sentence is awkward , should read something like” mindfulness has been conceived as an acquired skill, and as a trait-like construct” P.3, L.8 should read “multifaceted construct” P.3, L.12, 14, should read “curious” and innovative thought” P.3, L.20, The sentence starting with “for example, mindfulness” needs to be rewritten for consistency of tense (which manifested), and I assume you mean “processing and evoking ‘a feeling of memory’ during…”? P.5, L.18, the sentence beginning with “given that…” is a disorganized, run-on sentence. Please simplify or break up into smaller sentences. P.6 L.19, The last sentence is extremely vague and unnecessary. Potential meeting points and relationships between what? ……. P.9, L.19, should read “Trait socio-cognitive”, i.e. no “A” is necessary. Reviewer #2: The study aimed to achieve two primary objectives: (1) to further validate the SAMD questionnaire in a different population, and (2) to investigate whether awareness synchrony represents a distinct construct from mindfulness. The questions posed in the study are intriguing, and the employed methods, encompassing data analyses, are sound. I have only a few comments: -Given that one of the primary goals was to validate the SAMD questionnaire, it would be beneficial for the authors to conduct additional analyses to assess its reliability. For instance, exploring two subscales correlation, item-subscale correlation, and inter-item correlation could offer more insights. They might even consider dividing the results section into two subsections, with one dedicated to SAMD validation and the second to construct validity. Additionally, including Cronbach's alpha in the results section rather than the methods section would enhance clarity. -It is unclear why the MAAS was not included in the EFA. While I acknowledge the potential redundancy with the FFMQ, I don’t get how it is an issue to test whether SAMD items load on two distinguishable factors, independent of MAAS. -The decision to provide loading factors for only one of the factors in the EFA raises questions. It would be valuable to observe how different items load on various factors, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the questionnaire's structure. -The sentence, "Nevertheless, one item from each of the following scales, MD, SA, and ESQ, was loaded onto its corresponding factor. For the LMS, three 'engagement' items and one 'novelty producing' item were loaded onto their corresponding factors," lacks clarity regarding which corresponding factor is being referred to. Including all loading factors would enhance the clarity of this statement. -It would also be interesting to provide the correlations between factors in both the EFA and CFA as they would also inform the relationships between the identified factors. Typo: Introduction, L2 : "This mindful state is characterized" not "This mindful state characterized" ****** 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: Yes: Leonardo Christov-Moore 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.0307443.r001
Revision 1
10 Apr 2024 Author Response We wish to thank both reviewers for their insightful comments. We have made a number of changes to address all the issues raised by the reviewers. The paper is considerably stronger as a result. Below we detail the changes we made in blue. Reviewer #1: The manuscript was submitted to language editing. Corrections were made throughout the manuscript. 1. The study should be framed as one of bringing an aspect of mindfulness, “synchronicity awareness” in relation to other more studied aspects of the greater construct of mindfulness. Otherwise the rationale is not immediately clear from the abstract. We thank Reviewer 1 for this insightful comment. We have completely rewritten the abstract and we believe it now presents the rationale more clearly. 2. The reason for a dominantly caucasian sample is unclear (given the highly diverse populations available in US and UK), and will limit generalizability. I would strongly recommend recruiting more non-caucasian participants. We thank Reviewer 1 for this comment. Although the Prolific holds a highly diverse pool of participants, unfortunately most of the people choosing to take part in our study identified as Caucasians. We do agree that our ability to generalize the findings has been limited due to sample characteristics, and we now address this issue in the discussion (see P. 18 top). Nevertheless, following this comment we examined group differences between Caucasians and non-Caucasians, and found that these groups differed solely in Age (Caucasians were 6 years older in average) and Religiosity (Caucasians reported to be less religious). No differences were observed in any of the critical variables of the study. 3. The amount of compensation received by participants is not mentioned. Thank you for your attention. This was added. Please see page 8. 4. Points for improvement in writing (due to the unfortunately high number of incidences of typos, grammatical errors, and awkward or disorganized composition, I could not provide a full list. Please revise considerably before submitting): Thank you for your attention. Indeed, many typos and grammatical errors were found and hopefully we got them all now. P.2, L.3 should read” it has scarcely been examined scientifically and little is known…” This was corrected. Thank you. P.2, L.6 should read “engaged in an online survey…” Done P.3, L. 2 should read “mindful state is characterized” Done P.3. L.5-6 this sentence is awkward , should read something like” mindfulness has been conceived as an acquired skill, and as a trait-like construct” Done P.3, L.8 should read “multifaceted construct” Done P.3, L.12, 14, should read “curious” and innovative thought” Done P.3, L.20, The sentence starting with “for example, mindfulness” needs to be rewritten for consistency of tense (which manifested), and I assume you mean “processing and evoking ‘a feeling of memory’ during…”? Done P.5, L.18, the sentence beginning with “given that…” is a disorganized, run-on sentence. Please simplify or break up into smaller sentences. Done P.6 L.19, The last sentence is extremely vague and unnecessary. Potential meeting points and relationships between what? Done P.9, L.19, should read “Trait socio-cognitive”, i.e. no “A” is necessary. Done Reviewer #2: 1. Given that one of the primary goals was to validate the SAMD questionnaire, it would be beneficial for the authors to conduct additional analyses to assess its reliability. For instance, exploring two subscales correlation, item-subscale correlation, and inter-item correlation could offer more insights. We now present these analyses in the Appendix. See Tables A and B. 2. They might even consider dividing the results section into two subsections, with one dedicated to SAMD validation and the second to construct validity. We thank Reviewer 2 for this helpful suggestion. We tried dividing the Results section, but we felt that the outcome was somewhat artificial because the construct validity is an inherent part of the whole validation process. Therefore, we decided to keep the Results in their original format. 3. Additionally, including Cronbach's alpha in the results section rather than the methods section would enhance clarity. Cronbach’s alphas are now presented in Table 2. 4. It is unclear why the MAAS was not included in the EFA. While I acknowledge the potential redundancy with the FFMQ, I don’t get how it is an issue to test whether SAMD items load on two distinguishable factors, independent of MAAS. Thank you for this insightful comment. The MAAS was highly correlated with FFMQ’s ‘Acting with awareness’ (Pearson’s r = 0.78). Because EFA is basically a set of multiple regression analyses with are sensitive to multicollinearity, we decided to exclude the MAAS from this analysis. Indeed, scholars have argued that multicollinearity becomes an issue in EFA when it reaches .9 and above, but we decided to approach it with extreme care because the MAAS and FFMQ’s Awareness are not merely highly correlated but are basically the same thing (FFMQ’s Awareness consists of MAAS items). It should be noted that we examined Reviewer 2’s suggestion, and the analysis revealed better fit indices and is preferable from a purely statistic point of view (e.g., RMSEA = .030 instead of .036; TLI = .904 compared to .875 etc.), but from a methodological point of view it is wrong; Most of the variance of the MAAS has already been accounted for by the FFMQ’s Awareness, resulting in a combined MAAS-FFMQ’s Awareness combination and a few leftovers that do not account for any variance. 5. The decision to provide loading factors for only one of the factors in the EFA raises questions. It would be valuable to observe how different items load on various factors, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the questionnaire's structure. We apologize, but there seem to be a somewhat misunderstanding. All factor loadings are presented in Table 1. That is, loadings for all 9 factors are presented. We are not sure whether Reviewer 2 received a partial Table 1 or whether we haven't fully understood the reviewer's intention in Comment 5. We will be glad to clarify and to complete any missing information. 6. The sentence, "Nevertheless, one item from each of the following scales, MD, SA, and ESQ, was loaded onto its corresponding factor. For the LMS, three 'engagement' items and one 'novelty producing' item were loaded onto their corresponding factors," lacks clarity regarding which corresponding factor is being referred to. Including all loading factors would enhance the clarity of this statement. Indeed, there was a typo in this sentence, with the word “not” accidentally omitted, thus entirely changing the meaning of the sentence Please see the corrected sentence on P. 12-13. 7. It would also be interesting to provide the correlations between factors in both the EFA and CFA as they would also inform the relationships between the identified factors. This is an interesting insight. Thank you. We checked these correlations, and they were extremely high, suggesting both sets of factors to be practically identical. These correlations are now presented in the Appendix. Please see Tables C and D. 8. Typo: Introduction, L2 : "This mindful state is characterized" not "This mindful state characterized" Done Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers PLOS1 Apr2024.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307443.r002
17 Jun 2024 Decision Letter - Vilfredo De Pascalis, Editor PONE-D-23-43024R1Beyond coincidence: An Investigation of the Interplay Between Synchronicity Awareness and the Mindful State.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Rosenstreich, 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. The authors are invited to address the submitted comment of Reviewer 2 and resubmit the revised manuscript for acceptance evaluation. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 01 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, Vilfredo De Pascalis 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. Additional Editor Comments: The authors are invited to address the submitted comment of Reviewer 2 and resubmit the revised manuscript for acceptance evaluation. [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 #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: Yes ****** 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed all my comments, except for the fifth one regarding loading factors that was not clear. EFA provides a loading factor of each item on each latent variable. The authors only provided loading factors on the designated latent variable (as in CFA). I was wondering why is that ? While I understand the decision to streamline the presentation, providing loading factors for each item on each latent variable could offer a richer understanding of the relationship between SA/MD items and mindfulness/encoding style. ****** 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: Laurie Geers ******** [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.0307443.r003
Revision 2
1 Jul 2024 Author Response We thank Reviewer 2 for clarifying this issue. We now present EFA factor loadings in Table 1 and CFA factor loadings in Table 2. See pages 12 and 26. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers PLOS1 June2024.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307443.r004
3 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Vilfredo De Pascalis, Editor Beyond coincidence: An Investigation of the Interplay Between Synchronicity Awareness and the Mindful State. PONE-D-23-43024R2 Dear Dr. Rosenstreich, 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, Vilfredo De Pascalis Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): The authors have properly addressed the suggested issue by Reviewer 2. Thus, the manuscript can be accepted for publication. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307443.r005
Formally Accepted
8 Jul 2024 Acceptance Letter - Vilfredo De Pascalis, Editor PONE-D-23-43024R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Rosenstreich, 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 If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks 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 Prof. Vilfredo De Pascalis Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307443.r006

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