<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dear Matias Avellaneda and Giselle Kamenetzky,&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We have reached a decision regarding your submission to Revista Interamericana de Psicología/Interamerican Journal of Psychology, "Regulation of the stress response by social stimuli: A review across species".</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Considering the comments made by two reviewers and my own opinion with respect to your manuscript, we have decided to accept it conditional to a few modifications.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The consensus among the reviewers and editors of the manuscript is that narrative reviews, as the one you submitted, are not our preferred research synthesis approach (mainly because the validity of the conclusions presented is low in this type of reviews), we favor instead systematic approaches to research synthesis such as systematic reviews and metaanalysis. However, we think there is a place for narrative reviews in the scientific literature, and given a clear and explicit method section the submitted review could be a nice contribution to the research area.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you decide to submit a new version of the manuscript, please also attach a cover letter explicitly replying to each of the reviewers’ comments. I will be ready to review a new version of your manuscript as soon as you submit it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">My apologies for the long delay in reaching this decision, I hope you understand that 2020 and the beginning of 2021 have brought many unexpected difficulties for everybody.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Regards,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mario Laborda</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">------------------------------------------------------</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Reviewer A:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The manuscript offers a Narrative Review comparing studies of social buffering across species. This is a timely new contribution to Interamerican psychology:&nbsp; The manuscript expands the understanding of the topic. Nevertheless, there are problems to correct before I can recommend it for publication.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The manuscript is not based upon a systematic examination. There is nothing wrong with narrative reviews either. However, authors must declare it. The absence of a method section is a major concern. Reviews should have specifications of how articles were included into the review. Who takes the decisions of inclusions? What is the training or expertise of the person who did the search? What are the inclusion and exclusion criteria? How was the data analyzed? What data was registered form studies?&nbsp; Without these answers it is difficult to evaluate whether Authors critically review relevant literature. Nevertheless, they demonstrate an understanding of current knowledge related to the topic of social buffering. One can notice that authors build on existing literature in formulating ideas for this submission, but this is not stated in the current version of the manuscript.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The manuscript is well written in general. However, authors should look for grammar and spelling, e.g., change “Te” for “The”, be consistent with the verb tenses, check for run on sentences, etc. The author appropriately references primary and secondary sources, and indicates any headings and subheadings, using the style of the current APA publication manual. The term social buffering should be included in the title.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The conclusion should mention as limitations the disadvantage of narrative reviews: A low validity of the conclusion due to a lack of systematicity in the definition of the variables, search of studies, inclusion of studies, analysis and integration of the results, as well as other bias (author, publication, etc) that cannot be addressed in a narrative review. Nevertheless, after preventing readers and clarifying how the narrative review was done, I think that the review may become a contribution to RIP. I am sure that the topic is very interesting for the readers of the journal.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">------------------------------------------------------</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Reviewer B:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">General comment on the manuscript</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The review is on an interesting topic relevant to psychology. It summarizes and explains the research on the social buffer effect, where cortisol or corticosterone stress response is lowered by the presence of another individual during the stress. The social buffer effect has been studied in humans and mainly in animal models. The reduction of stress response is dependent on the age of the subject, the relation to the buffer individual and the stress levels of the buffer individual. Mothers are good buffers to infants and the young, while stressed individuals are worse buffers than non-stressed individuals. The research presented supports the conclusions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The review is relevant on a frame of stress research and its detrimental effects on health. It primarily contains basic, quantitative and experimental research. A main strength of the manuscript is its clean and concise writing style. Themes are logically grouped together and detailed. The information presented is useful for practice and applications, since social buffering is presented as a direct solution to stress health problems, although is not a focus of the review. A main weakness of the manuscript is the method of article selection.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Major Observations</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A review question is not apparent, the affirmation on the third paragraph of the introduction suggests that the objective is to analyze the effectiveness of the social buffer effect.&nbsp; From my point of view, such a question requires a quantitative approach, in the form of a meta-analysis. A reframing of the review objectives would better describe the work that the authors are presenting. The information presented better answers an exploration of different aspects of social buffering that may be of interest.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A method section is required. The lack of a clear method of article selection feeds into the problem of the lack of a clear objective. This manuscript needs a section where the method is detailed. What was searched and where? Internet databases or other types of bibliography etc. A narrative-type review like this one might be relevant, but it still needs some type of systematic article selection. For example, in the second paragraph of “The social buffering effect” section, it says that the most representative research is reviewed, but what is the criteria for selecting the most relevant? This can be explained in its own section.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Minor Observations</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are a lot of missing spaces (it reads “onthe effect” instead of “on the effect”, for example). Maybe is a problem with the document delivery system but see if they are missing in the original manuscript.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Some of the citations in the introduction could contain more recent articles. There is more recent literature on partial reinforcement effect, for example, Bouton, Woods and Todd, 2014 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2013.08.006). The citations in the first page regarding stress and its importance to health are mostly pre-2000.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The second paragraph on page 14 has different margins.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">---------------------------------------------------</span></p><br/><p>The following message is being delivered on behalf of Revista Interamericana de Psicología/Interamerican Journal of Psychology. ______________________________________</p>
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