The referee's challenge: a threshold process model for decision making in sport games

Judgment and decision making in sporting officials is a challenging task that involves the use of context. Although process models of decision making describe decision contexts, none of the existing models explains when sports officials use rule-driven decision making, or game management. The basic idea of our work is that referees use a subjective threshold to apply game management, which may explain this decision behavior. We propose a new dynamic threshold model that is based on concepts derived from Decision Field Theory (Busemeyer & Townsend, 1993). The model includes two thresholds of game management (high/low) and two contact situations (foul/no foul) as approaching one of these thresholds. Using the example of soccer refereeing, we argue that if the game hits a subjective threshold of aggressive play, then the referee shifts from applying the rules to managing the game. This new approach changes the scientific discussion from one focused on what referees should decide in one situation or the other, to a dynamic model that explains the basic psychological mechanism underlying the referee’s change in behavior during the game, both at the intra-individual as well as inter-individual leve

How should "hot" players in basketball be defended? The use of fast-and-frugal heuristics by basketball coaches and players in response to streakiness.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Sports Sciences on 8 January 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02640414.2014.999251 Previous research has shown that changes in shot difficulty may have rendered the hot-hand effect in basketball unobservable and are potentially a result of defensive adjustments. However, it has not been directly analysed whether strategic changes indeed take place in response to streakiness and whether they are effective with respect to winning games. The current work consists of an experimental study with 18 professional coaches and 20 players based on video sequences from National Basketball Association games, where the shown player displayed a streaky performance in half of the sequences. While coaches were asked to devise a defensive strategy after each viewed sequence, players had to assume the role of the shown player and decide whether to shoot or pass the ball. We find that coaches tended to increase the defensive pressure significantly more often on presumably hot players and thus make use of the hot-hand heuristic. Meanwhile, players chose to shoot more frequently in low-pressure and streaky situations but selected "pass" regardless of the previous performance when they faced increased defensive pressure. Assuming that a streaky player's performance is indeed elevated during hot phases, hot-hand behaviour can be considered adaptive in certain situations as it led hot players to pass instead of shoot

The effect of perceived streakiness on the shot-taking behaviour of basketball players.

We examine behavioural changes of basketball players arising from the hot-hand belief and use data of 1216 National Basketball Association games to measure the effect of cold and hot streaks on three proxies of shot difficulty. We find that the more consecutive shots players make (miss), the more difficult (easier) shots become along the three dimensions. Furthermore, most players' performance seems to improve during hot streaks because they attempt more difficult shots while no significant decrease in shooting accuracy takes place. This might explain why most previous studies could not find empirical evidence for the hot-hand belief in basketball when considering in-game field goal shooting

Inter-individual differences in sport refereeing: A review of theory and practice

Most studies on sport officials ignore the variance of the data in terms of individual differences. Here we highlight the need to focus on these differences in refereeing as the main point and goal of the current review. We argue that the study of individual differences is important for referee selection, development and performance evaluation. We present the available research on differences related to referee communication styles, types of interactions, and game management. We regard expertise and experience level as a key contributor to individual differences. Given the gap in research around the in-group variance, we discuss new directions for research and further recommendations for the field. We suggest that the areas in which more research and practice will inform our selection, training, and evaluation processes are communication and personal communication style, while having more flexibility in applying different refereeing styles to facilitate performance in different contexts