The temporal occlusion paradigm is often used in anticipation and decision-making research in sports. Although it is considered as a valid measurement tool, evidence of its reproducibility is lacking but required for future cross-sectional and repeated-measures designs. Moreover, only a few studies on decision making in real-world environments exist. Here, we aimed at (a) implementing a temporal occlusion test with multi-dimensional motor response characteristics, and (b) assessing intra- and inter-session item reliability. Temporally occluded videos of attack sequences in a team handball scenario were created and combined with the SpeedCourt® contact plate system. Participants were instructed to perform pre-specified defensive actions in response to the video stimuli presented on a life-size projection screen. The intra- and inter-session (after at least 24 h) reproducibility of subjects’ motor responses were analyzed. Significant Cohen’s (0.44–0.54) and Fleiss’ (0.33–0.51) kappa statistics revealed moderate agreement of motor responses with the majority of attack situations in both intra- and inter-session analyses. Participants made faster choices with more visual information about the opponents’ unfolding action. Our findings indicate reliable decisions in a complex, near-game test environment for team handball players. The test provides a foundation for future temporal occlusion studies, including recommendations for new explanatory approaches in cognition research.

In team handball, the individual match performance of each player is essential for winning games; however, a validated match analysis system is still lacking. Consequently, the aim of the study was to justify (1) the different relevant variables and their scoring within the individual match analysis (PlayerScore), (2) to determine the intra-rater reliability and validity of the PlayerScore, and (3) to determine the influence of the rater in relation to their degree of expertise level. Six games (three games each of Spain and Brazil, one game twice) of the 2021 World Championship were analyzed by six different raters. The PlayerScore was calculated for each field player of Spain and Brazil in all seven analyzed games. We found a high intra-rater reliability (ICC = 0.97) for the two rated games (Spain against Germany), a highly significant difference (p < 0.001) between the summarized team PlayerScore of Spain and Brazil, as well as significant differences (p < 0.001) for the factor “game” and “rater” (p < 0.05), but no significant interaction for “game × rater” (p = 0.90) in the two-way repeated measures ANOVA. We conclude that the PlayerScore is a reliable and valid rating tool to determine the individual players’ performance in team handball; however, the raters should have sufficient experience in the different techniques and tactics in team handball.

Athletic features distinguishing experts from non-experts in team sports are relevant for performance analyses, talent identification and successful training. In this respect, perceptual-cognitive factors like decision making have been proposed to be important predictor of talent but, however, assessing decision making in team sports remains a challenging endeavor. In particular, it is now known that decisions expressed by verbal reports or micro-movements in the laboratory differ from those actually made in on-field situations in play. To address this point, our study compared elite and amateur players’ decision-making behavior in a near-game test environment including sport-specific sensorimotor responses. Team-handball players (N = 44) were asked to respond as quickly as possible to representative, temporally occluded attack sequences in a team-handball specific defense environment on a contact plate system. Specifically, participants had to choose and perform the most appropriate out of four prespecified, defense response actions. The frequency of responses and decision time were used as dependent variables representing decision-making behavior. We found that elite players responded significantly more often with offensive responses (p &lt; 0.05, odds ratios: 2.76–3.00) in left-handed attack sequences. Decision time decreased with increasing visual information, but no expertise effect was found. We suppose that expertise-related knowledge and processing of kinematic information led to distinct decision-making behavior between elite and amateur players, evoked in a domain-specific and near-game test setting. Results also indicate that the quality of a decision might be of higher relevance than the required time to decide. Findings illustrate application opportunities in the context of performance analyses and talent identification processes.