The influence of judging experience on the decision-making of race-walking referees : Evidence from eye tracking

Abstract This study aims to study the visual search strategy of experienced race-walking referees in the decision-making process. This study selected 20 novices and 13 experienced race-walking referees and divided them into expert and novice groups according to their ruling experience. The eye movement experiment material was a race walking video taken on the spot. The participants were asked to watch the video and respond to the athletes ' fouls or not. Tobbi X3-120 eye tracker recorded the behavioral data and eye movement data. The results show that experienced race-walking referees show superior decision-making performance, high accuracy, and short response time. In addition, we also observed the differences in gaze behavior between the two groups of subjects. The experienced race-walking referees gazed more, longer, and earlier on the knee and ankle regions. The visual images also showed that the expert's gaze trajectory was clear, targeted, and focused on critical areas. In general, experienced race-walking referees have expert advantages in penalty decision-making, manifested in higher behavioral performance and concise, efficient, and goal-oriented visual search features.