Improved training of football referees and the decline in home advantage post-WW2

ObjectivesResearch has identified a decline in home advantage (HA) in a number of professional leagues since World War 2 (WW2). The purpose of the current study was to identify whether the decline in HA in English and Scottish Professional Football Leagues is mirrored by the radical transformation in the training of referees post-WW2, thus providing a new insight into the cause of HA.DesignA longitudinal quasi-experimental design.MethodsHA was calculated for each team at the end of every season for the four English and the Scottish Premier League post-WW2. We also compiled a list of events, statements and quotations to illustrate the dramatic change in the way referees have been trained (physically and psychologically), and assessed over the same period.ResultsWe observed a systematic decline in HA in professional English and Scottish leagues post-WW2, but with the steepest decline observed in lower divisions with smaller crowds. Of the factors thought to influence HA, crowd support appears the most consistent with these observations. Crowds are known to influence referees' decisions to favour the home side. However we argue that improved training of referees since WW2 has contributed to an improved ability to make objective decisions and a greater resilience to crowd influence, which explains the decline in HA but also accounts for the steeper decline observed with smaller crowds.ConclusionsThe continued existence of HA, and the less steep decline observed in top leagues suggests that referees' judgements are still not immune to the influence of larger crowds.     

The Blood of Jesus in revival theology and the contemporary Church with particular reference to the East African Revival and Roy Hession

One of the most common phrases heard in testimony, preaching, and song during the East African Revival (EAR) was the phrase ‘The Blood of Jesus Christ’. Taken from a rich biblical heritage, this phrase encapsulates a wide range of ideas concerning the work of the cross and the power of forgiveness in a believer's life. Whilst, as will be noted, the use of The Blood has been common to many revivals, this article examines especially the theology behind this phrase by looking at the most prominent of the EAR authors – Roy Hession. It investigates seven different applications of The Blood in a believer's life: The Blood as a testament that sin is forgiven, The Blood as cleansing the conscience, The Blood as victory over despair, The Blood as the remover of shame, The Blood as washing away sin, The Blood as the gateway of the Holy Spirit, and finally The Blood as the source of true fellowship. The theology of The Blood has a long history of use in the Church but it also comes with difficulties. To this end the article will investigate the legitimacy of the practice often found in Africa and some Pentecostal circles of invoking The Blood as protection against the demonic. The article closes by considering the reasons why speaking of The Blood in church can be uncomfortable yet is paradoxically of vital importance to revival.     

Going the distance: Extra-symbolic contributions to the symbolic control of spatial attention

Over the past 30 years, researchers have used symbolic cues such as spatial words and arrows to direct observers' attention to the location of target objects that appear at a single, fixed distance in simple visual environments; however, they have done so by using symbolic cues that provide only partial—directional—information about the spatial location of target objects. Thus, it remains unclear whether observers can only shift their attention broadly in the cued direction in response to these cues or whether they can shift their attention to the specific location of the target by combining an expectation about direction (derived from apprehension of the directional cue) with an expectation about distance (derived from some extra-symbolic cue). The results of two experiments showed that observers do shift their attention to relatively coarse spatial locations by combining expectancies about direction and distance, and that the extent to which observers do so is modulated by the presence of visible markers and the expected distance of the target. These findings are important because they provide the first evidence that extra-symbolic information about distance contributes to the symbolic control of spatial attention.     

Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing

The action-specific perception hypothesis (Witt, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20: 201–206, 2011) claims that the environment is represented with respect to potential interactions for objects present within said environment. This investigation sought to extend the hypothesis beyond perceptual mechanisms and assess whether action-specific potential could alter attentional allocation. To do so, we examined a well-replicated attention bias in the weapon focus effect (Loftus, Loftus, & Messo, Law and Human Behaviour 1, 55–62, 1987), which represents the tendency for observers to attend more to weapons than to neutral objects. Our key manipulation altered the anticipated action-specific potential of observers by providing them a firearm while they freely viewed scenes with and without weapons present. We replicated the original weapon focus effect using modern eye tracking and confirmed that the increase in time looking at weapons comes at a cost of less time spent looking at faces. Additionally, observers who held firearms while viewing the various scenes showed a general bias to look at faces over objects, but only if the firearm was in a readily usable position (i.e., pointed at the scenes rather than holstered at one’s side). These two effects, weapon focus and the newly found bias to look more at faces when armed, canceled out one another without interacting. This evidence confirms that the action capabilities of the observer alter more than just perceptual mechanisms and that holding a weapon can change attentional priorities. Theoretical and real-world implications are discussed.     

Response selection influences inhibition of return

Previous work has suggested that there may be a relationship between the magnitude of inhibition of return (IOR) and the number of possible responses in the perceptual‐motor task. To test this possibility, the present experiment used a display that contained four horizontally aligned cue/target locations. In different blocks of trials, subjects responded to the target either with a one‐response detection key press, a two‐response localisation key press, or a four‐response localisation key press. The results showed the largest magnitude of IOR was found in the one‐response condition and the least in the four‐response condition. These results suggest that IOR may be most effective in inhibiting relatively prepotent responses and the inhibitory effect weakens when responses require more intricate sensorimotor mappings.