A Study of Gaze Behavior for Decision-Making of Race-Walking Referees in the Multi-Person Scenarios
Race-walking referees make penalty decisions based on visual observation.Understanding their attentional bias toward relevant cues during the game is crucial for assessing these penalty decisions.This study used eye tracking technology to investigate the differences in gaze behavior and to compare penalty decisions between the expert race-walking referees and the novices.The results showed that the experts outperformed the novices in accuracy and reaction times while making decisions during multi-athlete race-walking scenarios.Compared with the novices,the experts also exhibited shorter fixation times,fewer fixation counts,fewer saccades,and clearer fixation trajectories.For task-related regions,experts performed longer fixation times,more fixation counts,and shorter fixation elapse times.Notably,fixation hotspots for experts predominantly clustered around the knees and ankles of a fouled athlete.These results support the hypothesis of a cognitive advantage for experts and emphasize the crucial role of conducting fast,accurate,and rational visual search strategies for trained referees to make high-quality penalty decisions.