Decision-making in basketball and handball games: A developmental perspective

The study examined the way in which novice basketball or handball players used different informational cues (current score, time left to play, numerical status of the team) for deciding a quick restart of play during a basketball or a handball game. The study also compared their responses with the responses from a senior experts group. The more experienced the novices, (a) the more they gave importance to the numerical status and the current score for judging the appropriateness of the strategy, and (b) the more the effect of time moderated the effect of current score on the appropriateness judgments. These developmental trends were shown to be faster in basketball than in handball. Learning the conditions under which a quick restart of play is appropriate or not appeared as more difficult in the case of handball than in the case of basketball. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.