Virtual reality as a representative training environment for football referees.

Visual experience plays an important role in facilitating referee decision-making. Video training can be used to train these perceptual-cognitive skills in discrete scenarios, for instance in foul situations in football, but is less suitable in other instances such as when seeking to make decisions in open-play scenarios due to a lack of representativeness. Recent technological advances enable the use of virtual reality (VR) to replicate game situations in a controlled and realistic manner.

The Effect of Blurred Perceptual Training on the Decision Making of Skilled Football Referees.

When judging ambiguous foul situations in football (soccer), referees must attune to the kinematic characteristics inherent in genuine fouls to ensure that they can (i) recognize when a foul has taken place, and (ii) discriminate the presence of deceptive intent on the part of the tackled player. The aim of this study was to determine whether perceptual training that removes superficial visual information would improve the decision-making performance of football referees. Two groups of skilled referees judged ambiguous foul situations on video before and after a training intervention that involved adjudicating foul situations.