Positive and negative effects of prior knowledge on referee decisions in sports = Positive und negative Auswirkungen vorherigen Wissens auf Schiedsrichterentscheidungen im Sport
Referees1 are involved in most competitive sports; moreover, in some sports, the assessment of athletes’ performance depends exclusively on human judgments. The tasks of referees vary from simple judgments to complex decisions. Many of these tasks surpass the limited human capacity to process inform...
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| Format: | Chapter/Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2005
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| In: |
The routines of decision making
Year: 2005, Pages: 311-324 |
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| Author Notes: | H. Plessner |
| Summary: | Referees1 are involved in most competitive sports; moreover, in some sports, the assessment of athletes’ performance depends exclusively on human judgments. The tasks of referees vary from simple judgments to complex decisions. Many of these tasks surpass the limited human capacity to process information (e.g., Salmela, 1978). For example, given the speed of the modern tennis game, the human perceptual system does not allow for differentiating between a ball that is on the line and one close to it (Jendrusch, 2002). It lacks the appropriate temporal resolution. However, decisions have to be made by referees even when situations are ambiguous or unclear, or when important information is missing due to personal or situational factors. Such situations seem to occur quite often in sport competitions. For example, in a recent study on the influence of crowd noise on referee decision in soccer, Nevill, Balmer, and Williams (2002) asked referees to make assessments for 47 typical incidents taken from an English Premier League match. One of the findings was that none of these challenges resulted in a unanimous decision by all qualified referees participating in the study (see also Rainey, Larsen, Stephenson, & Coursey, 1989). 1Depending on sports and specific tasks, referees are also called umpires, officials, linesmen, judges, and others. In this chapter, the term referee refers to the general category of people who monitor and control the application of the rules in a sporting competition. |
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| ISBN: | 0805846131 |