European Journal of Sport Science

ISSN: 1746-1391 (Print) 1536-7290 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tejs20

Foul or dive? Motor contributions to judging

ambiguous foul situations in football

Peter G. Renden , Sander Kerstens , Raôul R. D. Oudejans & Rouwen Cañal-

Bruland

To cite this article: Peter G. Renden , Sander Kerstens , Raôul R. D. Oudejans & Rouwen
Cañal-Bruland (2014) Foul or dive? Motor contributions to judging ambiguous foul
situations in football, European Journal of Sport Science, 14:sup1, S221-S227, DOI:
10.1080/17461391.2012.683813

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2012.683813

Published online: 31 May 2012.

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 European Journal of Sport Science, 2014
Vol. 14, No. S1, S221
S227, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2012.683813

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Foul or dive? Motor contributions to judging ambiguous foul situations

in football

PETER G. RENDEN, SANDER KERSTENS, RAÔUL R. D. OUDEJANS, & ROUWEN

CAÑAL-BRULAND

Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 02:29 23 February 2016

Abstract
Football (soccer) referees frequently face situations in which they have to distinguish dives and fouls. Yet, little is known
about the contributing factors that characterise the ability to judge these ambiguous situations correctly. To this end, in the
current article we tested the hypothesis that motor experience of observers contributes to the visual identification of
deceptive actions. Thereto, we asked skilled football referees, skilled football players, wheelchair bounded football fans (thus
with limited motor experience) and novices to judge whether potential tackle situations in football were either fouls or dives.
Results revealed that the referees (accuracy 72.2%, s6.2) and players (accuracy 72.0%, s 6.4) were better at
discriminating fouls and dives than the fans (accuracy 61.1%, s 7.2) and the novices (accuracy 57.4%, s7.0)
(P B 0.001). The results seem to point to an added value of motor experience in detecting deceptive movements.

Keywords: Deception, dives, fouls, motor experience, referees

Introduction That observers are in fact able to detect deceptive

Taking a dive has become a commonly used strategy
by football players in the attempt to receive a free
kick or a penalty. According to the football rules
however, this strategy is an illegal action and often
leads to much discussion between players, referees
and spectators. In an attempt to reduce the number
of dives taken, any simulating action intended to
deceive the referee is now labelled as unsporting
behaviour, which is sanctioned by a yellow card. As a
result, the referee faces the difficult task to success-
fully distinguish dives from fouls. This task is not just
demanding but also very important as wrong deci-
sions can have crucial effects on the outcome of the
game. Therefore it is of particular relevance to
understand which factors contribute to the deci-
sion-making process when distinguishing dives from
fouls. In this article, we aim to test the hypothesis
that motor experience in football contributes to the
ability to recognise dives in potential tackle situa-
tions.
intentions from bodily information was first reported
by Runeson and Frykholm (1983). They demon-
strated that naive observers were able to distinguish
actors lifting a heavy or a light box and even whether
actors faked or did not fake the weight of the lifted
boxes. The observers’ decisions were solely based on
the bodily (kinematic) information of the actors, and
the results thus indicated that bodily movements
convey sufficient (reliable) information about decep-
tive actions.
This is also the case in football in which important
information is portrayed in the kinematics of the
falling player. Recently, Morris and Lewis (2010)
identified recognisable movement characteristics
that can be observed when a player is diving. For
example, when a player is tackled, the body bends
forward over the legs, the head stays forward and the
arms prepare for impact. In contrast, when a player
is diving, the chest is more upright, the head is
turned back and the arms are raised in the air. The
authors denominate this specific diving movement as

Correspondence: Peter Renden, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 9,
Amsterdam 1081 BT, The Netherlands. E-mail: p.g.renden@vu.nl

# 2013 European College of Sport Science

 S222 P. Renden et al.
the ‘archers bow’. Although more ambiguous dive
movements have been observed as well (Morris &
Lewis, 2010), kinematic patterns conveyed in the
movement of the falling player indeed seem to
provide key information about the deceptive or
non-deceptive nature of falling.
In the field of sports, Jackson, Warren and
Abernethy (2006) were the first to examine the
influence of expertise on detecting deceptive move-
ments. They asked experienced and inexperienced
rugby players to detect deceptive intentions of
approaching rugby players during one on one tackle
situations. The results revealed that the experienced
players were better able to detect the deceptive
intentions of the approaching rugby player than their
less experienced counterparts. Jackson et al. argued
that the experienced players, when compared to the
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inexperienced players, had faced more deceptive
actions during training and matches, which im-
proved their perceptual expertise. In football refer-
eeing, this could mean that the more referees train
and improve their visual expertise (e.g. by means of
refereeing many matches or by video training, see
Plessner, Schweizer, Brand, & O’Hare, 2009;
Schweizer, Plessner, Kahlert, & Brand, 2011), the
better they may become in distinguishing dives from
fouls.
However, Cañal-Bruland, van der Kamp, and van
Kesteren (2010) recently argued that the skilled
rugby players in the Jackson et al. study had probably
not only faced, but also performed more deceptive
actions, suggesting that the higher degree of motor
experience could also have contributed to better
accuracy scores. The authors supported their argu-
ment by referring to findings from a recent study by
Aglioti, Cesari, Romani, and Urgesi (2008). Aglioti
et al. (2008) found that basketball players, who
possessed extensive motor experience, were superior
in judging the outcome of basketball free throws (i.e.
hit or miss) when compared to the visually equally
experienced coaches and journalists, and to inexper-
ienced laymen. Because of the assumption that the
players, coaches and journalists had comparable
visual experience, these results suggest that motor
experience has additional value on top of visual
experience (for more behavioural evidence, see e.g.
Casile & Giese, 2006; Hecht, Vogt, & Prinz, 2001).
Further support for this notion comes from studies
using functional magnetic resonance imaging and
transcranial magnetic stimulation. These studies
show that certain motor areas in the brain, known
as the ‘mirror neuron system’ (e.g. Rizzolatti &
Craighero, 2004), are more activated when obser-
ving actions that are part of one’s own action
repertoire than when watching actions that are not
part of one’s own motor repertoire (cf. Aglioti et al.,
2008; Calvo-Merino, Glaser, Grèzes, Passingham, &
Haggard, 2005; Calvo-Merino, Grèzes, Glaser, Pas-
singham, & Haggard, 2006). As such, higher activa-
tions of the motor areas pertaining to the mirror
neuron system show positive correlations with better
recognition and outcome prediction of other peo-
ple’s movements.
These findings lead to the assumption that motor
experience may also enhance the ability to detect
deceptive movements. However, studies that exam-
ined deception detection could thus far not confirm
this hypothesis. For instance, in an attempt to
dissociate motor and perceptual experience, Cañal-
Bruland and Schmidt (2009) asked handball field
players, goal-keepers and novices to detect the
deceptive intentions of a player taking penalty shots.
Although it was expected that the motor experience
of the field players would lead to better judgements
than those of the goalkeepers, it appeared that field
players and goalkeepers performed equally well,
while both groups outperformed the inexperienced
control group. This would imply that the motor
experience of the field players did not contribute to
deception detection. However, although handball
goalkeepers do not generally take penalty shots,
they do perform many throws during matches and
training. Thus, the amount of motor experience of
the keepers may well have influenced the results of
this experiment.
In a similar study, Sebanz and Shiffrar (2009)
presented videos and static pictures of fake and real
basketball passes to basketball players and control
participants. They found that experts outperformed
novices only when videos were presented, that is,
when dynamic information was available. The find-
ing that experts only outperformed novices using
dynamic information, led the authors to suggest that
the experts may have tapped into their own action
repertoire. However, the experimental design was
not build to rule out the possibility that experts also
made use of their extensive visual experience. That
is, Sebanz and Shiffrar (2009) did not include a
control group that had equal visual experience (as
compared to the experts), but no motor experience.
Taken together, several studies seem to suggest
that motor experience contributes to recognising
and/or predicting the movements of observed others
(cf. Aglioti et al., 2008; Calvo-Merino et al., 2005,
2006). Yet, due to methodological limitations, espe-
cially in testing appropriate groups with differences
in motor and visual experience, strong evidence for
this hypothesis in the realm of deception detection
remains to be provided (Cañal-Bruland & Schmidt,
2009; Cañal-Bruland et al., 2010; Sebanz & Shiffrar,
2009). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to
examine if motor experience enhances the ability to
detect deceptive movements when compared to mere
visual experience.
 Judging foul situations in football S223

Table I. Mean data (9s) for motor and visual experience in years and hours per week for the football referees, football players, the
wheelchair bounded (WB) fans and the novices

Motor experience Visual experience

Years Hours per weeka Years Hours per weekb

Football referees 11.7794.6 5.0291.58 15.4593.8 9.0693.6

Football players 20.2795.7 6.5092.11 20.2995.7 9.0692.6
WB fans 3.5894.9 2.8393.69 36.00910.5 7.0794.6
Novices 0.9492.8 0.3190.93 1.2493.6 90.0
a
For the referees, fans and novices: on average 5, 24 and 18 years ago (see Method section).
b
Average visual experience at the time they participated in the study.

To this end, we invited skilled football referees,
skilled football players, wheelchair bounded football
fans and a group of novices to judge deceptive and
non-deceptive tackle situations in football in a video-
based test. The referees were considered to be
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referees, would outperform the fans and the novices
as these groups had no football motor experience.
Because of their visual experience, we expected the
fans to outperform the novices. These expectations
should minimally result in higher accuracy scores for

experts in this task with task-specific visual experi-
ence in judging tackle situations, general visual
experience in watching football, and football motor
experience in the past (which could still be of added
value). The players had football motor experience, as
well as general visual experience in watching foot-
ball. Notably, when the referees and players gained
their motor experience, they simultaneously gained
perceptual experience (see also Cañal-Bruland,
Mooren, & Savelsbergh, 2011). Therefore, it is
reasonable to argue that both the referees and players
had perceptual-motor experience in football. Yet,
what distinguishes these two groups from the other
two groups is particularly their motor experience in
football. That is, compared to the fans and the
novices the referees and players had more motor
experience. Therefore, in the remainder of the article
we refer to referees and players as motor experi-
enced. The wheelchair bounded fans had only
general visual experience in watching football. Be-
cause of their disability they had very limited motor
experience related to walking and running. The
novices had neither motor nor visual experience
with football. The video based test consisted of
watching and judging video clips of tackle situations,
in which either a foul or a dive was presented.
We expected that given their task-specific visual
experience referees would be best at discriminating
fouls and dives (e.g. Catteeuw, Helsen, Gilis, &
Wagemans, 2009). In line with the assumption that
motor experience is of added value on top of visual
experience, we expected that the players, just as the
the players and the referees when compared to the
fans and the novices as well as for the fans when
compared to the novices.
Method
Participants
A total of 78 participants (66 men, 12 women) took
part in the study; 31 skilled football referees (mean
age 25.35 years, s3.73, 30 male), 17 skilled
football players (mean age 27.29 years; s 6.18, 17
male), 12 wheelchair bounded football fans (mean
age 45.33 years, s10.63, 10 male) and 18 novices
(mean age 30.72 years, s12.52, 9 male) partici-
pated voluntarily.1
An overview of the experiences of the groups is
presented in Table I. The referees were selected by
the Dutch football association (KNVB) for the
national talent pool for referees and they performed
in the top amateur league of The Netherlands. The
mean experience as a referee was 6.82 years
(s2.12), refereeing on average one match a week.
On average, they had ceased to play football more
than five years before the experiment (mean 5.83
years, s3.2). Their mean playing experience was
11.77 years (s 4.6). Referees reported to have
played football on average 5.02 hours per week
(s1.58). The referees reported an average of 9.06
(s3.55) hours of visual experience with football per
week. This included the time watching football
matches (live or on television) as well as refereeing
football matches.

1
Originally we aimed for 18 participants per group. For the group of skilled players we achieved this number with the exception of one
player who was not available for testing due to being ill. As concerns the referees we depended on the Dutch Football Association. The
association made it possible that we measured all referees (n31) on one of their training days. After approaching over 50 wheelchair
bounded fans, in the end 12 qualified participants were willing to participate within the time span of the study. Statistically we checked
whether corrections were needed, but Levene’s test of Equality of Error Variance was not significant indicating that homogeneity of variance
was not violated and that corrections were not necessary.
 S224 P. Renden et al.
All players were members of one team performing
at the same level of competition as the referees. The
league can be compared to the Second Division in
England. These players can therefore be considered
highly skilled football players. Their mean playing
experience was 20.27 years (s 5.65). They reported
to play football on average 6.5 hours per week
(s2.11). On average, the players reported 9.06
hours (s 2.63) of visual experience with football per
week. This included the time watching football
matches (live or on television), football practice
(fitness training was excluded) and playing matches.
Five fans had played football before they were
bounded to a wheelchair,2 but all had ceased playing
more than 12 years ago (mean 24.6 years, s14.99).
The mean playing experience of their group was 2.83
hours a week (s3.69). The fans reported 7.07
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hours of visual experience a week (s4.60).
Two of the novices had also played football in the
past. They stopped playing, respectively, 7 and 30
years ago. The mean playing experience of the
novices was 0.31 hours a week (s0.93). None of
the novices watched football regularly.
Participants provided written informed consent
prior to participation, and the experiment was
approved by the Ethics committee of the Research
Institute.
Materials
The experimenters selected potential tackle situa-
tions from broadcasted television images of the
World Cup 2006 in Germany. The potential tackle
situations were selected if the experimenters believed
it showed a foul or a dive. In the context of
association football, a foul is defined as an unfair
tackle of the opponent. A dive is defined as a
voluntary fall to feint that a foul was committed in
an attempt to receive a penalty or a free kick (FIFA,
2011). Because the determination of a foul or dive is
based on the interpretation of the referee, after initial
scene selection two experienced referees were se-
lected to form an expert panel. Both referees were
accredited by the Dutch national football associa-
tion. The referees watched all selected situations
including replays from different angles as often as
they needed, and judged whether the player’s fall was
caused by a foul of the opponent or a dive of the
concerning player. A situation was included in the
2
We had no reason to believe that the fans’ visual-cognitive skills were impaired by their injury. Seven participants of this group were active
as wheelchair basketball players. Therefore, we assumed that they had no problems with their visual-cognitive skills. We visited the other five
participants in their home and we noticed no signs of visual or cognitive impairments during our contact with them or when they filled in the
accompanying questionnaire asking for their experiences with football. One potential participant was excluded because we did have doubts
about his visual-cognitive skills and whether he fully understood the task.
experiment if both referees independently gave the
same judgement. In total, 60 situations were in-
cluded containing 30 fouls and 30 dives (6 practice
clips and 54 experimental clips). The situations were
cut into brief video clips that stopped at the moment
the whole trunk of the falling player had contact with
the ground. Replays or parts thereof, were not
included. Furthermore, reactions of referees were
not visible in the clips. Clips were always cut-off
before any reaction of the referee occurred. The
average length of the clips was 3.7 seconds. The clips
were presented in a random order.
Procedure
The participants were tested individually and 54
clips (27 fouls and 27 dives) were presented on a
laptop (Packard Bell EasyNote) with a 15.4 inch
screen. The distance between the screen and the
participant’s head was approximately 50 centimetres.
No information was provided about the number of
fouls and dives that would be presented. After each
clip, the participants had three seconds to indicate
whether the player’s fall was caused by a foul or a
dive (for the use of a three seconds time window see,
e.g. Cañal-Bruland et al., 2011). Participants gave
their answer by clicking a button on the keyboard.
Before the 54 experimental clips were presented, the
participants judged 6 practice clips to become
familiar with the experimental procedure and they
were informed about their results. The entire experi-
ment lasted approximately 15 minutes.
It was not possible to test all the referees indivi-
dually, because of the time schedule that was
provided by the KNVB. Of the 31 referees 24
watched the clips on a wide screen (2 3 meters)
in one room, and wrote their judgements on an
answer sheet. These participants were divided in
three groups of eight and they were positioned
approximately three meters from the screen. To
find out whether the different test circumstances
had an effect on the results, we compared the 24
referees tested in groups with the 7 referees who were
tested individually. A 2 (foul, dive) 4 (individually
tested, group one, group two and group three)
ANOVA revealed no significant main effect for
group, F3,27 0.921, P 0.444. Therefore, we in-
cluded all referees in the study.

Data analysis
We performed a mixed-design ANOVA on the mean
accuracy scores (  number of correct decisions)
with condition (foul, dive) as the within-subjects
factor and group (players, referees, fans and novices)
as the between-subjects factor. In addition, to
examine whether a response bias for either ‘foul’ or
‘dive’ judgements may have influenced the accuracy
scores, we performed a one-way ANOVA on the
absolute percentage scores of ‘dive’ judgements with
group as the between-subjects factor. Furthermore,
we tested the absolute percentage scores of the ‘dive’
judgements of each group separately against the
value of 50%, which is the value for an unbiased
response.3 When appropriate, we performed post-
hoc comparisons using Bonferroni correction. The
Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 02:29 23 February 2016
uncorrected alpha level for significance was set at
0.05. Effect sizes were calculated as partial eta-
squared values (hp 2).
Results
The mean accuracy scores for each group are
presented in Figure 1. The 2 (foul, dive)4
(referees, players, fans, novices) ANOVA on accu-
racy scores revealed a significant main effect for
group, F3,74 25.40, P B0.001, h2p 0.507.4 Post-
hoc pairwise comparisons revealed that the players
(mean 72.0%) were more accurate in their judge-
ments than the fans (mean 61.1%), P B 0.001, 95%
CI [4%, 18%] and novices (mean 57.4%),
P B 0.001, 95% CI [9%, 21%]. Likewise, the
referees (mean 72.2%) did better than the fans,
P B 0.001, 95% CI [17%, 49%] and novices,
P B 0.001, 95% CI [10%, 20%]. There were no
significant differences in accuracy scores between the
players and referees (P0.998) nor between the fans
and the novices (P0.799). There was no signifi-
cant main effect for condition (foul, dive),
F1,74 0.21, P 0.885, nor a significant interaction
between group and condition, F3,74 1.883,
P 0.140.
For the analysis of response bias, the results
showed no significant difference among groups,
F3,74 1.823, P 0.150. Furthermore, one-sample
t-tests revealed no significant biases for the players
(mean 52.0%), t16 1.031, the referees (mean
52.4%), t30 1.255, the fans (mean 44.7%),
t11   1.226, and the novices (mean 52.7%),
t17 1.262, all P 0.05. These results rule out
3
Note that analyses on the percentage of foul judgements are redundant with analyses on the percentage of dive judgements.
4
To rule out that the variable ‘age’ influenced the accuracy scores, we included age as a covariate. The 2 (foul, dive)4 (referees, players,
fans, novices) ANCOVA on accuracy scores with age as covariate revealed no significant effects of age.
Judging foul situations in football S225
that response bias had an influence on the perceptual
judgements of the four groups.
Discussion
The aim of the present study was to examine if sport
specific motor experience enhances the ability to
detect deceptive movements in ‘foul vs. dive’ judge-
ments in football. To this end, referees, players,
wheelchair bounded fans and a group of novices
judged video clips of tackle situations in football.
The most direct examination of the role of motor
experience on foul vs. dive judgements concerned
the comparison between the players and wheelchair
bounded fans, as only the players possessed signifi-
cant motor experience while both groups had similar
amounts of visual experience and no experience or
formal training as referees. Regarding this compar-
ison, results showed that players were significantly
more accurate than wheelchair bounded fans in
judging fouls and dives, thereby providing support
for the hypothesis that motor experience may have
beneficial effects on decision-making processes in
refereeing.
Furthermore, results showed that both referees
and players performed significantly better than the
fans and novices as regards judging fouls and dives.
Notably, the players were just as good as the referees
in discriminating between dives and fouls. Fans and
novices also showed no differences. We argue that
because the players (with motor experience) were as
accurate as the referees and more accurate than the
wheelchair bounded fans (note that these three
groups were comparable with respect to general
visual football experience), it seems that motor
experience of the players enhanced their ability to
detect deceptive movements. That wheelchair
bounded fans were as ‘good’ as the novices and
worse than the players may indicate that mere
general visual experience in watching football has
no added value for detecting deceptive movements.
In comparison to earlier studies (Aglioti et al.,
2008; Cañal-Bruland & Schmidt, 2009; Sebanz &
Shiffrar, 2009), we tried to make a clearer distinction
between participants with both visual and motor
experience (players) and participants with merely
visual experience (wheelchair bounded fans). Note
that Aglioti et al. (2008) showed that their expert
watchers (coaches and journalists) were more accu-
rate in predicting the outcome of basketball shots
than novices. As argued by Cañal-Bruland et al.
(2010) this could be due to the fact that basketball
 S226 P. Renden et al.
Figure 1. Mean accuracy scores (in %) for the football referees, football players, the wheelchair bounded (WB) fans and the novices.
Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 02:29 23 February 2016
Vertical bars indicate the Standard Deviation (s).
coaches, who joint the basketball journalists in the
expert watchers group, had gained considerable
motor experience during their active careers as
players. Possibly, past motor experience (on average
coaches had stopped playing basketball 9.4 years
earlier) is still of added value for predicting shot
outcome. Unfortunately, the results of the coaches
and journalists were not separated and thus the
influence of the coaches’ previous motor experience
could not be determined. Similarly, the distinction
regarding motor and visual experience among the
groups in the studies of Cañal-Bruland and Schmidt
(2009) and Sebanz and Shiffrar (2009) did not allow
unambiguous conclusions regarding the contribution
of motor experience in detecting deceptive move-
ments.
In the current study, the referees were considered
the experts given that they had past motor experi-
ence, general visual experience in watching football,
but most important task-specific visual experience.
Referees were the only group that had extensive task-
specific experience in actually judging and providing
a formal decision regarding fouls and dives. A
demonstration of the importance of the influence
of task-specific experience has been recently given by
Dicks, Button, and Davids (2010). They showed
that gaze and movement behaviour of football goal-
keepers during penalty shots were influenced by the
type of experimental task. The goalkeepers made
more saves under a natural (in situ) experimental
condition when compared to joystick and verbal
response conditions. The more representative an
experimental task is (the closer to the task they are
used to perform in the field), the higher the chance
that participants can draw from their specific experi-
ences and also show representative performances.
To what degree the past motor experience of the
referees contributed to their ability to discriminate
fouls and dives remains to be determined. The
question is whether the referees would have per-
formed the same if they had not gained any motor
experience in football. In this experiment, the fans
had a comparable amount of visual experience but
very limited motor experience and they did neither
perform better than the novices nor did they perform
as good as the referees. Thus although the referees’
task-specific experience may have had added value, it
may well be that their past motor experience was an
important contributor to their accuracy scores as
well. Future research is needed to gain more insight
into the relationship between after-effects of previous
motor experience and the ability to detect deceptive
movements.
Although we argue that the presence or absence of
motor experience seems to have influenced the
accuracy scores in this experiment, some possible
limitations need to be taken into account. Firstly, a
possible limitation is that the experimental task is not
representative for the whole field of decisions a
referee has to make. For instance, football referees
have to judge offside situations, ensure that players
adhere to the rules (e.g. penalise hand play), penalise
coaches for unsporting behaviours etc. Thus, gen-
eralising our findings on foul and dive judgements to
other decisions referees make during games needs to
be done with caution. In a similar vein, it is unlikely
that potential tackle situations in regular matches do
have a 50% chance of being a foul or a dive.
Therefore, the 50/50 distribution of fouls and dives
in the experiment may have differed from the
distribution with which referees are normally con-
fronted in actual matches. As a result, it is possible
that in comparison with the other groups, particu-
larly the players, referees may have had a disadvan-
tage in judging the clips, as they may have expected a
different distribution between fouls and dives. This

may provide an additional explanation for why
referees were not more accurate than players.
Secondly, the visual experience of the referees and
players was partly gained on the football field. The
fans only gained their visual experience as spectators.
It may be possible that visual experience gained on
the football field (especially given the specific view-
ing perspective [immersed in play]) was of added
value compared to visual experience gained as a
spectator or from watching television.
Thirdly, although we ensured a clearer distinction
between groups, there is still some minimal overlap
in experiences. MacMahon, Starkes, and Deakin
(2009) recently argued that in experiments that
examine the contribution of different experiences,
experiences may also overlap between experimental
Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 02:29 23 February 2016
groups due to role transitions (e.g. players become
referees). As for the referees, we did discuss their
previous football experience. As for the other groups
there was a small overlap in experiences as well.
Some of the fans gained little football motor
experience before their injury and some of the
players did a little refereeing in youth matches
(players at the age of 6
10 years). However, as
mentioned before and most importantly, compared
to previous studies (Aglioti et al., 2008; Cañal-
Bruland & Schmidt, 2009; Sebanz & Shiffrar,
2009) the overlap in experiences of the groups tested
in the current study is present yet minimal. In
addition, MacMahon et al. further argued that task
characteristics that are for instance assigned to
refereeing a match may play a central role when
playing. For example, players constantly have to
anticipate what is likely to occur next. As such, they
may also have to make anticipatory judgements as to
whether a potential tackle situation will be judged as
a foul or not. Therefore, it may be possible that the
players in our experiment had gained task-specific
experience in judging tackle situations (typically
assigned to referees).
To summarise, our results seem to suggest that
sport specific motor experience contributes to de-
tecting deceptive movements, and, more specifically,
to discriminating fouls and dives in football. How-
ever, it remains to be determined whether recent
motor experience is of more value compared to
motor experience gained in the past. If this is the
case, practical implications of this finding may be
that athletes but also referees may improve their
ability to detect a certain deceptive movement by
improving their own experience of performing that
movement. For example, referees might be able to
improve their judging performance by training dives
and fouls in practice.
Judging foul situations in football S227
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