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Visual search behavior and decision-making in expert and less-experienced football referees across different foul
Zilu Zhou1, Rancheng Tao1, Kongyun Huang2
1School of Football, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China.
Introduction:
Modern football imposes considerable demands on referees' rapid foul judgements, yet the dissociation between accuracy and efficiency of officiating expertise across different foul situations remains poorly characterized.
Methods:
The present study compared 15 national-level and 15 Class-3 male football referees in three typical situations: ball-contesting, tactical foul and handball. Participants viewed 30 real-match video clips and made one technical and one disciplinary decision per clip while an EyeLink 1000 Plus eye tracker recorded global eye-movement indices and area-of-interest (AOI) measures. Data were analyzed with 2 (group) × 3 (situation) mixed-design ANOVAs and independent-samples t-tests.
Results:
Decision accuracy did not differ between groups for either technical or disciplinary judgements, although a robust situation main effect was observed [technical accuracy F (2,56) = 116.45, p < 0.001, η2 p = 0.81; disciplinary accuracy F (2,56) = 13.73, p < 0.001, η2 p = 0.33]. For decision efficiency, disciplinary reaction time showed a Group × Situation interaction [F (2,56) = 4.16, p = 0.021, η2 p = 0.13]; simple-effect analysis indicated that national-level referees responded faster than Class-3 referees in ball-contesting situations [F (1,28) = 6.07, p = 0.020, η2 p = 0.18]. Pupil diameter showed an analogous interaction (p = 0.026), although within-situation simple effects did not reach significance. AOI analyses revealed that national-level referees fixated the upper body of the fouling player earlier in ball-contesting situations [t(26.02) = -2.38, p = 0.024, d = 0.87] and revisited the attacker's lower body and the defender's upper body less often in handball situations (both p < 0.05, d ≥ 0.80).
Discussion:
Within this video-based task, expertise-related differences emerged primarily in efficiency-related indices rather than overall accuracy; sample size, the simulated nature of the stimuli and ceiling-or-near-chance effects in some conditions limit generalization, and the findings warrant validation in real-match settings.
