A color-related bias in offside judgments in professional soccer: a matter of figure-background contrast?

We investigated the impact of outfit colors on the frequency of offside judgments in soccer. In a recent laboratory study, observers made more offside judgments against forwards wearing the outfit of Schalke 04 (blue shirts, white shorts) than against forwards wearing the outfit of Borussia Dortmund (yellow shirts, black shorts), when figure-background luminance contrast was higher for the former team. Here, we investigated whether a similar effect is present in real matches of the German Bundesliga. Study 1 revealed a higher offside score for Schalke 04 than for Borussia Dortmund in matches between these clubs. Studies 2–4 showed higher offside scores for teams wearing a blue/white outfit, and lower offside scores for teams wearing a yellow/black outfit, in their matches against all other Bundesliga teams. Together, results suggest that more offside judgments are made against teams of higher salience, possibly induced by differences in figure-background contrast. Notably, this color-related bias occurred in our study even though a Video-Assistant Referee (VAR) supervised the (offside) decisions of the Assistant Referees

Do pictures help to memorize? The influence of item presentation and executive functions on everyday memory in older adults

Ageing is associated with a declining memory performance. This phenomenon has been extensively investigated in different laboratory settings, while the transferability from laboratory findings to everyday life situations is rather unclear. In fact, everyday life situations have been found to enhance as well as impair older adults’ memory performance. The present study deals with the question which kind of factors influence memory performance of older adults during everyday life situations. Therefore, participants (70.16 ± 5.8 years) were exposed to a supermarket scenario. Their task was to collect previously presented objects in a specified order while objects were either presented as words or pictures in correct or randomized order. Additionally, participants performed the Stroop test, Trail making test and Bochumer Matrizen test, in order to determine a possible predictability of the performance of these tasks and everyday life performance. Results showed that older adults had more problems to memorize items in the more challenging (randomized item presentation) task but presentation via pictures could offset this effect

The impact of team preferences on soccer offside judgments in laypersons

The present study uses a quasi-experimental design to investigate the impact of team preferences on the accuracy of offside judgments. In Experiments 1 and 2, supporters of two German soccer clubs (i.e., Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04) judged offsides in artificial scenes from a match between the clubs. We expected that supporters of both clubs would less frequently report the offside position of a forward from the preferred team. The results of Experiment 1 partly confirmed the predictions. Both groups reported the offside position of a yellow forward less frequently than that of a blue forward, and this effect was much larger for supporters of Borussia Dortmund than for supporters of Schalke 04. The difference between groups could be attributed to team preferences. The weaker effect of team preference in supporters of Schalke 04 was attributed to an unexpected perceptual effect that increased the accuracy of offside judgments for blue forwards in both groups. Experiments 2 and 3 showed the presumed effect of team preferences and the perceptual effect, respectively, in isolation. In summary, the results of our experiments provide evidence for (a) an effect of team preferences and (b) an effect of shirt–background contrast on offside judgments in soccer

“Put your Hands up in the Air”? The interpersonal effects of pride and shame expressions on opponents and teammates

The aim of the present research was to investigate the interpersonal effects of pride and shame expressions amongst opponents and teammates in a soccer penalty scenario. Across a series of experiments using the point-light method, pride and shame expressions exerted strong effects upon observers' anticipated emotions, associated cognitions, and performance expectations. Using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in two pilot studies we demonstrated that the created pride and shame point-light stimuli were implicitly associated with status and performance related attributes. In Experiment 1, observing pride expressions caused opponents to anticipate more negative emotions, cognitions, and lower performance expectancies toward their next performance in comparison with neutral expressions. In contrast, pride expressions led teammates to anticipate more positive emotions (i.e., pride and happiness), cognitions, and performance expectations toward their next performance than neutral expressions (Experiments 2–4). The results are discussed within the emotions as social information (EASI, Van Kleef, 2009) framework by arguing that the social context has to be taken into account when investigating the interpersonal effects of emotion expressions. In conclusion, the present research highlights the potential interpersonal influence of the nonverbal expressions of pride and shame in soccer penalty shootouts

The role of different directions of attention on the extent of implicit perception in soccer penalty kicking

The role of different directions of attention on the extent of the off-center effect (penalty takers kick to the bigger side of the goal more often, although they explicitly perceive the goalkeeper in the center of the goal) was investigated for soccer penalty kicking. Regarding the directions of attention of the striker, two conflicting assumptions (attention is paid to the goalkeeper vs. attention is only spent on target) were directly contrasted. Participants viewed a goalkeeper standing either in the middle of the goal or being displaced by different distances to the left or right. In the goal-side-related instruction condition, participants had to indicate the greater goal side and already did so at above chance-level for small displacements of 0.1%, although they were not confident in their perceptual judgments, hinting at the occurrence of the off-center effect. They became mindful of displacements of 0.8% and larger when they indicated the goal side for kicking with greater confidence. In the goalkeeper-related instruction condition, participants were asked to choose a goal side for kicking, but only when they perceived the goalkeeper in the middle of the goal. Participants chose the greater goal side at above chance-level for small displacements of 0.2%. They became mindful of the displacement for a difference of 0.8%. However, when comparing the results of both instruction conditions statistically it turned out that the effect of different directions of attention on the off-center's extent differs from those previously reported. Participants were implicitly influenced by comparably small goalkeeper displacements, but became earlier aware of goalkeeper displacements in the goal-side-related instruction condition

The Relationship Between Cognitive Functions and Sport-Specific Motor Skills in Elite Youth Soccer Players

The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between basic cognitive functions and sport-specific motor skills in elite youth soccer players. A total of 15 elite youth soccer players aged 11–13 years performed a computer-based test battery measuring the attention window (AW), perceptual load (PL), working memory capacity (WMC), and multiple object tracking (MOT). Another set of tests was used to asses speed abilities and football-specific technical skills (sprint, change of direction, dribbling, ball control, shooting, and juggling). Spearman’s correlation tests showed that the diagonal AW was positively associated with dribbling skills (rs = 0.656) which indicates that a broader AW could be beneficial for highly demanding motor skills like dribbling. WMC was positively related to dribbling (rs = 0.562), ball control (rs = 0.669), and ball juggling (rs = 0.727). Additionally, the cumulated score of all cognitive tests was positively related to the cumulated motor test score (rs = 0.614) which supports the interplay of physical and psychological skills. Our findings highlight the need for more, and especially longitudinal, studies to enhance the knowledge of cognition-motor skill relationships for talent identification, talent development, and performance in soccer

The development of a method for identifying penalty kick strategies in association football

Penalty takers in association football adopt either a keeper-independent or a keeper-dependent strategy, with the benefits of the keeper-independent strategy presumed to be greater. Yet, despite its relevance for research and practitioners, thus far no method for identifying penalty kick strategies has been available. To develop a validated and reliable method, Experiment 1 assessed characteristics that observers should use to distinguish the two strategies. We asked participants to rate 12 characteristics of pre-recorded clips of kicks of penalty takers that used either a keeper-independent or keeper-dependent strategy. A logistic regression model identified three variables (attention to the goalkeeper, run-up fluency and kicking technique) that in combination predicted kick strategy in 92% of the penalties. We used the model in Experiment 2 to analyse prevalence and efficacy of both the strategies for penalty kicks in penalty shoot-outs during FIFA World Cups (1986–2010) and UEFA Football Championships (1984–2012). The keeper-independent strategy was used much more frequently (i.e., 78–86%) than the keeper-dependent strategy, but successes did not differ. Penalty takers should use both the strategies to be less predictable. Goalkeepers can use the developed model to improve their chances to succeed by adjusting their behaviour to penalty takers’ preferred penalty kick strategy

Synchronization of passes in event and spatiotemporal soccer data

The majority of soccer analysis studies investigates specific scenarios through the implementation of computational techniques, which involve the examination of either spatiotemporal position data (movement of players and the ball on the pitch) or event data (relating to significant situations during a match). Yet, only a few applications perform a joint analysis of both data sources despite the various involved advantages emerging from such an approach. One possible reason for this is a non-systematic error in the event data, causing a temporal misalignment of the two data sources. To address this problem, we propose a solution that combines the SwiftEvent online algorithm (Gensler and Sick in Pattern Anal Appl 21:543–562, 2018) with a subsequent refinement step that corrects pass timestamps by exploiting the statistical properties of passes in the position data. We evaluate our proposed algorithm on ground-truth pass labels of four top-flight soccer matches from the 2014/15 season. Results show that the percentage of passes within half a second to ground truth increases from 14 to 70%, while our algorithm also detects localization errors (noise) in the position data. A comparison with other models shows that our algorithm is superior to baseline models and comparable to a deep learning pass detection method (while requiring significantly less data). Hence, our proposed lightweight framework offers a viable solution that enables groups facing limited access to (recent) data sources to effectively synchronize passes in the event and position data