A Naturalistic Approach to Training Accurate and Coherent Decision Making in Rugby Union Referees

The purpose of this investigation was to pilot the use of a video-based training program designed to develop referees’ shared mental models. A group of English Rugby Football Union (RFU) national referees, divided into a control group (n = 15) and experimental group (n = 41) made their immediate decisions on pre and posttests of 10 video recordings taken from real game scenarios. Over a six-week period the experimental group studied training tapes consisting of 5 sets of 5 tackles, in each case with an expert providing his interpretation of the correct decision. Each clip was filmed from the referee’s perspective and taken from real game situations in order to maintain high ecological validity in accordance with naturalistic decision-making theory. The lowest ranked referees on the national panel significantly improved their percentage of correct decisions, becoming 17.43% more accurate in their decisions at the posttest. These results suggest that such shared mental model training is an appropriate method for improving referee decision making. \bb\164 words.

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