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The authors have addressed all comments and the paper is now ready for publication.
I would like to thank the authors for the work done.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Jafri Abdullah, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Both reviewers have given some suggestions for a minor revision. I would like to ask you to follow the reviewers' advice (especially the proposal of Reviewer 2 on slightly changing the title and the direct comparison between the difference scores). I think this paper will make an original and relevant contribution to the field.
The manuscript is a re-submission of a previously revised work in which the authors explored the effect of electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) on the intentional binding effect. In the current version the authors have expanded the sample size and modified part of the experimental methods.
Overall, their revised work provides an interesting approach to investigate the EMS-induced movements in relation to a well-established measure of sense of agency.
Following comments on previous version of the manuscript, the authors have increased the sample size of the subjects participating in their studies. By performing a power analysis based on their pilot study, the authors increased the number of participants accordingly. This ensures that the study has sufficient statistical power to detect meaningful differences between voluntary and EMS-induced pushing. Compared to the previous version, the authors reduced the number of trials to “to minimize the difference in trial counts between Experiment 1 and 2 and lessen participants’ burden”. Since this effectively reduce the sample size within each subject, I suggest mentioning the reasons to do so in the text.
By increasing their sample size, the authors further substantiated their results. A minor comment on figure 8 is that the colors of the boxplots should be associated more strongly with the double y-axis. In general, the availability of raw data will facilitate other researcher to expand upon the present work.
It's much better than the first draft I previously reviewed. The language is mostly clear although I think the introduction still needs some work for better flow.
-The title of the paper emphasizes the intentional binding measurement. However, I note that your intentional binding results were a bit inconsistent, and the strongest evidence that EMS acceleration does not reduce sense of agency seems to be provided by the questionnaire measures of agency. For this reason, I suggest you slightly modify the title: "The effect of electrical muscle stimulation on intentional binding and explicit sense of agency"
-lines 58-62 in the introduction acknowledge controversy over the interpretation of intentional binding as a measure for the sense of agency. This is good, and I believe I previously requested the change. However, the authors should then explain how, for this reason, it is a good idea to measure agency with implicit AND explicit measures in the same experiment. This helps to justify your methods.
-line 206 - "competitively combine voluntary pushes" <- This phrase is a little strange in English. I suggest deleting the word "competitively"
-Figure 3 shows data from Experiment 1, but it is inserted into the introduction for Experiment 2. I think it should be moved back, closer to Table 2.
no comment
-line 220 - "...a significant shift in the action task clearly distinguished voluntary from involuntary EMS movements". The authors reach this conclusion because the difference between baseline and operant was significant for voluntary actions (p < .0001) but not for involuntary (p = .0503). However, if the sample size was slightly larger, then you probably would have seen a significant shift in the involuntary condition as well. Instead of only comparing baseline to operant for each condition, can you directly compare the difference scores for voluntary and involuntary, and show that the shift in action judgments is significantly larger for voluntary?
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