Visual search behaviors of association football referees during assessment of foul play situations.
It is well reported that expert athletes have refined perceptual-cognitive skills and fixate on more informative areas during representative tasks. These perceptual-cognitive skills are also crucial to performance within the domain of sports officials. We examined the visual scan patterns of elite and sub-elite association football referees while assessing foul play situations. These foul play situations (open play and corner kick situations) were presented on a Tobii T120 Eye Tracking monitor. The elite referees made more accurate decisions and differences in their visual search behaviors were observed. For the open play situations, referees in the elite group spent significantly more time fixating the most informative area of the attacking player (contact zone) and less time fixating the body part that was not involved in the infringement (non-contact zone). Furthermore, the average total fixation time in the contact zone and non-contact zone tended to differ between the elite and sub-elite referees in corner kick situations. In conclusion, elite level referees have learned to discern relevant from less-relevant information in the same way as expert athletes. Findings have implications for the development of perceptual training programs for sport officials.
Department of Kinesiology, Laboratory of Perception and Performance, Movement Control and Neuroplasticity Research Group, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Tervuursevest 101, (box 1501), B - 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Jochim
J
Spitz
Department of Kinesiology, Laboratory of Perception and Performance, Movement Control and Neuroplasticity Research Group, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Tervuursevest 101, (box 1501), B - 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Koen
K
Put
Department of Brain & Cognition, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Tiensestraat 102, (box 3711), B - 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Johan
J
Wagemans
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University, London, UK.
A Mark
AM
Williams
Department of Kinesiology, Laboratory of Perception and Performance, Movement Control and Neuroplasticity Research Group, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Tervuursevest 101, (box 1501), B - 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Werner F
WF
Helsen
Decision making; Expertise; Eye-tracking; Sports officials