In association football, the difficulty in making offside decisions depends on
both perceptual and cognitive processes. Therefore, the objectives of the present
study were to enhance the decision-making skills of assistant referees by further
developing their ability to (1) time slice the incoming information flow into
series of isolated time frames during an ongoing offside situation and (2) use
this information to mentally read off the spatial positions of the key-role
players. Training (n = 10) and control groups (n = 10) were exposed to a pre- and
post-test, consisting of an offside decision-making and frame recognition test.
In the latter, assistant referees were asked to indicate which of five photos
best represented the spatial position of the defender and attacker at the moment
of the pass. Only the training group received 12 web-based offside training
sessions. First, the training group improved in mentally freezing, holding and
scanning the mental picture of the offside situation in short-term memory from
pre- to post-test, as evidenced by an increased recognition accuracy. Second, the
improvement in recognition accuracy resulted in enhanced performance on the
offside decision-making task. The benefits of web-based training are highlighted.
PMID: 25972094 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]