title: Soccer Offside Judgments in Laypersons with Different Types of Static Displays.
abstract: Four experiments investigated offside decisions in laypersons with different types of static displays. Previous research neglected this group although the majority of assistant referees in soccer games at the amateur level are laypersons. The aims of our research were (a) to investigate the spatial resolution in laypersons' perception of offside situations, (b) to search for biases in laypersons' offside judgments, and (c) to develop useful displays for future research. The displays showed the moment when a midfielder passes the ball to a forward moving in the vicinity of a defender. We varied the spatial location of the forward around the defender in eleven steps and participants made their offside decision by pressing a key. Across experiments, displays varied in abstractness (simple shapes, clipart figures, photographs). There were two major findings. Firstly, both accuracy and speed of offside judgments deteriorated when the spatial distance between forward and defender decreased, approaching guessing rate at the smallest distances. Secondly, participants showed a consistent bias in favor of the non-offside response, in contrast to most studies on professional assistant referees. In sum, the results highlight the limited spatial resolution of the visual system and underscore the role of response bias in offside-judgment tasks.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wühr
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive and Team/Racket Sport Research, German Sport University, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Frowin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fasold
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive and Team/Racket Sport Research, German Sport University, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Memmert
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011930:Reaction Time; D012916:Soccer; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult