This study looks at the visual scan patterns of high-class basketball referees. Using mobile eye-tracking devices, referees’ gaze behavior was analyzed during the execution of three-point shots in the official pre-season games of Germany’s men’s professional basketball league. We evaluated the extent to which the referees fulfill the tasks assigned to them, where do they look, and to what extent does their gaze behavior overlap during a three-point shot. Results indicate that referees who are far away from the ball and are, therefore, not responsible for observing the actual shot, tend to comply with their areas of responsibility less often than referees standing nearer to the ball, i.e., they appear to observe the ball more than required (ball watching) at the expense of other areas that they are required to be observing at the beginning of the shooting process. However, referees spend a very small part of a three-point shot looking at the same areas of interest. This indicates that referee teams’ allocation of gaze is rather effective, remaining in line with FIBA recommendations and is presumably not the main cause for errors in officiating.
In recent years, studies have increasingly dealt with the interaction of gaze behavior and decision making of team sports athletes. However, there is still a variety of important game situations, for example, in the case of penalty corners in field hockey, in which this interaction has not been investigated in detail yet. Penalty corners present a meaningful goal scoring opportunity by providing a relatively free shot. This paper considers two studies. The first study investigated a possible connection between the gaze behavior and the quality of decisions of experienced field hockey players and evaluated the level of success of different gaze strategies. A preliminary study (Study 1) was designed as a survey questionnaire with the aim of preparing for the main study by obtaining subjective assessments of the individual gaze behavior and decision making of professional athletes. In the second and the main study (Study 2), the gaze behavior of experienced field hockey players was recorded using mobile eye-tracking systems to analyze different strategical approaches in associated gaze behavior and decision making. Study 1 showed that players consider reacting to the defenders' behavior during a penalty corner a promising avenue for improving success at penalty corner attempts. It also indicated that such defense-dependent strategies are currently only rarely employed. Study 2 demonstrated how gaze behavior differs between different strategical approaches of the offense. It was shown that the gaze direction on the ball, the stopper, and the goal area is important to allow for a more optimal adaptation to the tactical behavior of defense. It can be concluded that adaptive decision making (i.e., choosing which variation will be carried out just after the “injection” of the ball) seems promising but requires further training to improve the success rate of penalty corner.
In recent years, research has shown a positive correlation between sport-specific cognitive abilities and the performance of referees in different sports. However, it is still uncertain how much of the expertise exhibited by referees results from acquired sport-specific skills versus pre-existing general abilities. This study aimed to determine if the relationship between sport-specific abilities and expertise previously observed also applies to general visual abilities. In cooperation with the German basketball federation, basketball referees were recruited for the study, resulting in the final sample of 86 participants who were grouped as elite basketball referees, amateur referees, or novices. These participants completed five tests within the Vienna Test System: time and spatial anticipation, perceptual speed, visual orientation, and spatial working memory. Five separate ANOVAs reported a significant effect of the factor expertise on the performance in spatial anticipation. Post hoc tests revealed that elite referees performed significantly better than amateur referees and novices in spatial anticipation. The superior performance of elite referees in spatial anticipation tasks suggests that their expertise may not be solely limited to acquired skills in basketball but may also be partly attributed to better general spatial anticipatory abilities that might reflect a required skill for refereeing.
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