Abstract
Judging offside in football represents a typical go–nogo task (offside—raising the flag, no offside—no response). Nevertheless, several studies involved two-choice tasks (e.g. offside—press key A, no offside—press key B) to investigate potential sources of errors in offside situations. While go–nogo and choice–response tasks are commonly used in experimental psychology, response preferences may differ between the two tasks. Therefore, we investigated the impact of response requirements on offside judgments in a sample of male participants without experience in professional refereeing. Each participant judged displays of potential offside situations in a go–nogo condition and in a two-choice condition. The results show that response requirements affected the response bias of the participants and suggest that go–nogo requirements increase the preference for the positive response (i.e. the offside response) as compared to the two-choice task. We discuss both methodological and theoretical implications of this finding.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The term soccer is mainly used in the USA to distinguish the football game from the game America Football. In this article we use the term football according to Rules of the IFAB (2017).
Table 2 shows the absolute frequencies (cumulated across participants) of correct responses and error as a function of task and spatial separation.
References
Baldo, M. V. C., Ranvaud, R. D., & Morya, E. (2002). Flag errors in soccer games: The flash-lag effect brought to real life. Perception, 31(10), 1205–1210. doi:10.1068/p3422.
Barte, J. C. M., & Oudejan, R. R. D. (2012). The effects of additional lines on a football field on assistant referees positioning and offside judgments. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 7, 481–492. doi:10.1260/1747-9541.7.3.481.
Belda Meruenda, F. (2004). Can the human eye detect an offside position during a football match? British Medical Journal, 329, 1470–1472. doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7480.1470.
Blurton, S. P., Greenlee, M. W., & Gondan, M. (2014). Multisensory processing of redundant information in go/no-go and choice responses. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 76, 1212–1233. doi:10.3758/s13414-014-0644-0.
Catteeuw, P., Gilis, B., García-Aranda, J.-M., Tresaco, F., Wagemans, J., & Helsen, W. (2010a). Offside decision making in the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups. Journal of Sports Siences, 10, 1027–1032. doi:10.1080/02640414.2010.491084.
Catteeuw, P., Gilis, B., Wagemans, J., & Helsen, W. (2010b). Perceptual-cognitive skills in offside decision making: Expertise and training effects. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 32(6), 828–844.
Catteeuw, P., Gilis, B., Wagemans, J., & Helsen, W. (2010c). Offside decision making of assistant referees in the English Premier League: Impact of physical and perceptual-cognitive factors on match performance. Journal of Sport Sciences, 5, 471–481. doi:10.1080/02640410903518184.
Catteeuw, P., Helsen, W., Gilis, B., Van Roie, E., & Wagemans, J. (2009). Visual scan patterns and decision-making skills of expert assistant referees in offside situations. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 31, 786–797.
Chiarello, C., Nuding, S., & Pollock, A. (1988). Lexical decision and naming asymmetries: Influence of response selection and response bias. Brain and Language, 34, 302–314. doi:10.1016/0093-934X(88)90141-1.
Donders, F. C. (1969). On the speed of mental processes. Acta Psychologica, 30, 412–431.
Gilis, B., Helsen, W., Catteeuw, P., Roie, E. V., & Wagemans, J. (2009). Interpretation and application of the offside law by expert assistant referees: Perception of spatial positions in complex dynamic events on and off the field. Journal of Sport Sciences, 6, 551–563. doi:10.1080/02640410802702178.
Gilis, B., Helsen, W., Catteeuw, P., & Wagemans, J. (2008). Offside decisions by expert assistant referees in association football: Perception and recall of spatial positions in complex dynamic events. Journal of experimental psychology Applied, 14, 21–35. doi:10.1037/1076-898X.14.1.2121.
Gomez, P., Ratcliff, R., & Perea, M. (2007). A model of the go/no-go task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 389–413. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.3.389.
Gordon, B., & Caramazza, A. (1982). Lexical decision for open- and closed-class words: Failure to replicate differential frequency sensitivity. Brain and Language, 15, 143–160.
Green, D. M., & Swets, J. A. (1966). Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics. New York: Wiley.
Helsen, W., Gilis, B., & Weston, M. (2006). Errors in judging “offside” in association football: Test of the optical error versus the perceptual flash-lag hypothesis. Journal of Sport Sciences, 24(5), 521–528. doi:10.1080/02640410500298065.
IFAB. (2017). Laws of the game 2017/2018. Zurich, Switzerland: The International Football Association Board. Rules and booklet can be retrieved from: http://static-3eb8.kxcdn.com/documents/274/092646_180517_LotG_17_18_FINAL_EN.pdf.
Lakens, D. (2013). Calculating and reporting effect sizes to facilitate cumulative science: A practical primer for t-tests and ANOVAs. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00863. (article 863).
Macmillan, N. A., & Creelman, C. D. (2005). Detection theory: A user’s guide. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mallo, J., Frutos, P. G., Juárez, D., & Navarro, E. (2012). Effect of positioning on the accuracy of decision making of association football top-class referees and assistant referees during competitive matches. Journal of Sports Sciences, 30(13), 1437–1445. doi:10.1080/02640414.2012.711485.
Measso, G., & Zaidel, E. (1990). Effect of response programming on hemispheric differences in lexical decision. Neuropsychologia, 28, 635–646. doi:10.1016/0028-3932%2890%2990118-8.
Müsseler, J., Stork, S., & Kerzel, D. (2002). Comparing mislocalizations with moving stimuli: The Fröhlich effect, the flash-lag, and representational momentum. Visual Cognition, 9, 120–138. doi:10.1080/13506280143000359.
Oudejans, R. R. D., Bakker, F. C., Verheijen, R., Gerrits, J. C., Steinbruckner, M., & Beek, P. J. (2005). How position and motion of expert assistant referees in soccer relate to the quality of their offside judgements during actual match play. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 36(1), 3–21.
Oudejans, R. D. R., Verheijen, R., Bakker, F. C., Gerrits, J. C., Steinbrückner, M., & Beek, J. B. (2000). Errors in judging offside in football. Nature, 404, 33. doi:10.1038/35003639.
Perea, M., Rosa, E., & Gomez, C. (2002). Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task? Memory & Cognition, 30, 34–45. doi:10.3758/BF03195263.
Put, K., Wagemans, J., Jaspers, A., & Helsen, W. (2013). Web-based training improves on-field offside decision-making performance. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 14, 577–585. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2013.03.005.
Ratcliff, R., & Rouder, J. N. (1998). Modeling response times for decisions between two choices. Psychological Science, 9, 347–356. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00067.
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user‘s guide. University of Pittsburgh: Psychology Software Tools.
Wühr, P., Fasold, F., & Memmert, D. (2015). Soccer offside judgments in laypersons with different types of static displays. PLoS One, 10(8), 1–30.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Lukas Stellmach for collecting parts of the data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
The procedure performed in the presented study was in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional committee (the ethics committee of the German Sport University approved conduction of this study) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fasold, F., Wühr, P. & Memmert, D. Response requirements affect offside judgments in football (soccer). Psychological Research 83, 924–934 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0902-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0902-6