Factors Influencing Attenuating Skill Decay in High-Risk Industries: A Scoping Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This review of the "broader literature concerning influential factors of "skill acquisition and decay regarding complex cognitive tasks in high-risk industries" is a very good examination of a high priority area of safety research.

Author Response

Thank you very much, we appreciate your positive feedback.

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of Influencing Factors for Attenuating Skill Decay in High-Risk 2 Industries: a Scoping Review 

In this paper, the authors do a scoping review of the literature regarding factors that attenuate skill decay for tasks in high-risk industries. The review was done very rigorously and the paper is very clear and well written. I found it very interesting and honestly look forward to its publication so I can reference it soon. I particularly like breakdown of factors into task, person, and method related factors.

There are a few things that need to be addressed before this paper is ready for publication. 

1) there are several terms used in section 3.1.1 that could have different meanings for different people and their meanings need to be explicitly stated. I am thinking of: “closed-loop, procedural, discrete and controlled processing tasks; open-looped, continuous, and automatic processing tasks.” I think I know what you mean but I am not positive. Further, throughout the paper the word proceduralize is used quite frequently. What exactly do you mean by that? My spell check doesn’t even recognize it. Obviously, at the most fundamental level, it means to make something into a procedure but what does that look like in the real world?

2) What does this mean: “which require a considerable amount of different cognitive processes”? Different than what? 

3) A table of the results of section 3.1.1, would help a lot. I was getting pretty confused about which characteristic increased decay and which decreased it. 

4) Need clarification: “As stated by [58], it seems not sufficient, for adapting skills to a novel situation, to simply remember how a complex task that was once learned has to be performed; indeed, it may be the case that one needs to be able to understand the novel task and combine and develop strategies.” You lost me a bit here. An example might help.

5) Oh my gosh - Table 3 and 4 are ENTIRELY too large. Difficult to process it’s so big. TOO much white space. Seriously, they should be one page each.

6) 3.2.3. first three sentences should be one paragraph

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your detailed and constructive feedback. We found this very helpful in further developing the manuscript and we will describe the changes that we made in detail in the attached document.

Best regards

the authors

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

Please find attached my comments about the article : Influencing Factors for Attenuating Skill Decay in High-Risk industries: A Scoping Review. 

Best regards, 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your detailed and constructive feedback. We found this very helpful in further developing the manuscript and we will describe the changes that we made in detail in the attached document.

Best regards

the authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The article title is appropriate.

The abstract accurately reflects the content.

The significance of the article is explicitly stated.

Introduction:

The introduction provides a good, generalized background of the topic that quickly gives the reader an appreciation of the wide range of factors for attenuating skill. However, to make the introduction more substantial, the author may wish to provide several references to substantiate the claim made in the first sentence (that is, provide references to other groups who do or have done research in this area). The objective is clearly defined. However, I feel the sentence could be modified to something like “In this publication, we show that the ........”

Methodology:

The research study methods are sound and appropriate. There are several instances where assertions are made that are not substantiated with references.  

Results :

All figures, tables, and photos are necessary and appropriate. I do not think any additional graphics are necessary.

Discussion:

As suggested above, I think a more in-depth discussion of Figs. 2 would be helpful. I feel this is an important result for this paper, and therefore it merits more discussion. No significant limitations are discussed.

Conclusion:

The conclusions or summary are accurate and supported by the content.

Literature:

The literature cited is relevant to the study, but there are several instances, which have been noted above, in which the author makes assertions without substantiating them with references.

The article adequately ties to the relevant literature.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your constructive feedback. We found this very helpful in further developing the manuscript and we will describe the changes that we made in detail in the attached document.

Best regards

the authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

This work presents influential factors of complex cognitive skill decay and introduces refresher interventions that are successful in retaining them. There are some comments for the authors to improve the quality of the manuscript.

1. For section 1.2, more elaborations about task-, method-, and person-related variables should be provided. I expect a paragraph is for one variable.
2. One citation should be added to “In many high-risk industries refresher interventions are mandatory including, e.g., aviation, maritime and healthcare. In other high-risk industries such as the chemical and pharmaceutical production a periodic refresher intervention is not yet mandatory”.
3. After this sentence “There are several reasons to revisit and update the skill decay literature with respect to complex cognitive tasks in high-risk industries”, I cannot see the reasons clearly.
4. In figure 1, there should be a “person-related factor”.
5. There are some grammar mistakes and typos in the manuscript. The authors are suggested to seek a professional editing service (e.g. MDPI)
6. What is a breadth approach? Please specify.
7. In the identification of relevant studies, how many years for the search range was set?
8. The exclusion criteria are not specific.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your constructive feedback. We found this helpful in further developing the manuscript and we will describe the changes that we made in detail in the following document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for the high quality of the clarifications that were provided following the comments on the first version of the article. I read the new version with great interest and understood the contribution of this research much better. The results are better highlighted in particular with the new formatting of tables 4, 5 and 6.

(I would only have a very very short comment, p5, l.360, where it would be useful to specify (1) identification of the research question (presented in the introduction), ..).

Bravo for your work. 

Best regards

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your in-depth and constructive feedback on our earlier version and we are grateful for your positive response now.

Thank you for pointing out that the identification of the research question should be found in the introduction section. We followed your suggestion and state now: “(1) identification of the research question (presented in the introduction),…” (p 5, Line 360).

Best regards,

The Authors

Reviewer 5 Report

The authors did a good job in improving the manuscript. I have no further comments.