# Reliability of Perceptual-Cognitive Skills in a Complex, Laboratory-Based Team-Sport Setting
## 1 Introduction  
In team sports, players use relevant visual cues of their opponents to score or prevent goals, or simply to position themselves advantageously for attack or defense. Visual information about player positioning [1, 2] or postural cues [3, 4, 5] can be used to anticipate an opponent's intention [6, 7, 8] and allows for making punctual decisions. To investigate anticipation and decision making in laboratory settings, temporal occlusion (TO) [9] is a well-established paradigm that has been applied in several studies. In TO, action sequences are occluded at different times in order to restrict the visual information available and thus to create varying stages of anticipatory requirements. TO can therefore be used to identify postural cues that influence predictions of future actions or to distinguish better and worse players [10, 11, 12]. Previous studies using this method have demonstrated that high-skill athletes outperform their low-skill counterparts in response quality, meaning that theycan use less visual information to foresee intended movements in action sequences. A systematic review conducted by [PERSON] et al. [13] found an overall expert-novice between-group difference (_p_ < 0.001) for response accuracy with an effect size of 0.25 in 64 selected TO studies. TO was applied as an expert-novice paradigm in numerous sport disciplines, for example, in volleyball [14; 15], squash [16], badminton [17], tennis [18] and field-hockey [19], to name a few. Despite the large body of evidence, relevant gaps in TO research include a systematic assessment of test reliability. Even though expert-level comparisons indicate validity, reliability is an equally important psychometric property with direct relevance for applied and basic research on developmental or training-induced changes in decision making. So far, reliability analyses in TO are mostly based on the prediction outcomes of the participants. In volleyball, a cross-sectional study using a computer test with binary choice options [14] investigated the internal consistency of prediction responses in a visual anticipation test. A split-half technique, using the Spearman-Brown formula, revealed a reliability coefficient for video pair responses of 0.72. Longitudinal studies in racquet sports demonstrated high inter-rater (_r_ =0.92) and intra-rater (_r_ = 0.98) reliability for decision accuracy in cricket [20] and for response accuracy in tennis (_r_ =0.90-0.96) [21] and softball (_r_ = 0.74 and \(r\) = 0.99) [22]. Intra-class correlations were used, and accuracy calculations were executed with interval scaled variables. When considering that the TO paradigm has been applied for the past 40 years, very limited knowledge about reliability and reproducibility of the paradigm itself exists. The effects of the choice of outcome parameter, test design (cross-sectional or longitudinal) and test setup on later interpretations of the obtained findings remain uninvestigated. Moreover, other works with TO examined mainly accuracy outcomes in the form of dichotomous choice options (e.g., ball flight direction or type of throw). In team handball, the 7 m penalty, a rather isolated closed-game situation, has been the central object of investigations. A study by [PERSON] et al. [14] revealed differences between experienced and novice goalkeepers in anticipating hard or lobbed shots, and accuracy increased with later occlusion conditions. Results were confirmed in another study by [PERSON] et al. [23]. The binary outcomes were obtained in computer-based test settings or as verbal reports, often without time restrictions. Such laboratory-based test setups could surely lead to diminished expert advantages and seem to only partially capture anticipation skills [13]. Decisive moments of kinematic cues could be identified in penalty throwing; however, decision making under time constraints in complex, multifactorial situations was not considered in team handball hitherto. In one of a few studies, [PERSON] et al.