Perception and decision-making training in Additional Assistant Referees: an innovative approach to make the human brain smarter and faster

Referees need to be able to efficiently make decisions under time pressure in a dynamic and complex context. The accuracy, uniformity and consistency of referees’ decisions are considered one of the most important aspects of their performance. To further improve the standards of refereeing, it is essential to understand why and how decisions are made. However, limited knowledge is available in scientific literature on the decision-making processes of referees. In this PhD project, we aim to deepen our insights in the mediating perceptual-cognitive skills underlying elite football referees’ performance.

The first study showed that elite referees made more accurate decisions than sub-elite referees and their superior performance was underpinned by different visual search behaviors. Elite referees identify, focus, and interpret the most crucial information within the visual display in order to guide subsequent decision making.

The second study further examined the skills underpinning perceptual-cognitive expertise in association football referees by determining the relative contribution of several perceptual-cognitive skills. Domain-specific skills were more predictive of elite-group membership than domain-generic measures of perception and cognition.

The findings of study 1 and 2 provide an insight in the perceptual-cognitive skills underlying elite and sub-elite referees’ decisions and are consistent with existing findings on expert sport athletes. Understanding the underlying mechanisms will help to develop appropriate training methods that facilitate the acquisition and fine-tuning of decision-making skills. It is concluded that training and testing of referees must be executed using video situations that are representative of their everyday performance setting.

Apart from referee-specific skill training, video technology has been introduced to assist the referee’s decision-making process and to avoid clearly incorrect decisions. Video assistant referees have access to video replays in real time and slow motion. Moreover, fans, players, and sport commentators make more and more use of slow-motion replays to judge crucial situations, such as penalty decisions and direct red card incidents.

As far as we know, we were the first to examine the impact of video speed on the decision-making process of referees (study 3). Results showed that slow-motion footage increases accuracy for the technical decision of referees (no foul, indirect free kick, direct free kick or penalty kick), particularly for the corner kick situations. However, the impact of video speed depends on the type of decision and the type of situation that need to be assessed.

The findings of study 3 were replicated in study 4. Moreover, an in-depth analysis was performed and it was concluded that referees penalize tackle situations more severely in slow motion compared to real time. For example, referees were more inclined to decide on a red card, when the reference decision was actually a yellow card. Similar results have previously been obtained when using slow-motion video during court trials. Overall, these findings regarding the impact of video speed on the decision-making process of referees help to determine when and how slow-motion replays should be used in foul play assessments.

The approach might have practical utility in a variety of professional settings in which time-constraint decision making in a complex environment is key (e.g. drivers, medical doctors involved in reading medical imaging outcomes, pilots, police officers)