Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MSc)

Department

Kinesiology and Physical Education

Faculty/School

Faculty of Science

First Advisor

Michael E. Cinelli

Advisor Role

Supervisor

Abstract

An essential component of individual and team success in basketball is decision-making ability. Critically, basketball coaches require reliable and valid tools to assess this skill to aid their talent evaluation processes. To address previous challenges in examining decision-making, the current study aimed to create a laboratory-based perceptual task that could serve as a proxy for in-game decision-making ability. Grounded in ecological psychology, the perceptual task allowed participants to perceive and act upon collision and aperture affordances in a virtual reality environment. The study sample included Canadian university basketball players and non sport-playing Canadian university students (x̄ = 21.14 years ± 2.43; 17 athletes and 19 non athletes). Two separate two-way mixed ANOVAs revealed that basketball players were more accurate (F(1, 34) = 4.327, p = 0.045, ω² = 0.052) and more consistent (F(1, 34) = 7.695, p = 0.009, ω² = 0.156) than non-athletes on the perceptual task. Correlational analyses suggested that consistent performance on perceptual task was moderately associated with higher assists (r(14) = 0.41 [-0.11, 0.75], p = 0.119), higher turnovers (r(15) = 0.42 [0.05, 0.79], p = 0.093), and higher box creation scores ((r(15) = 0.47 [0.10, 0.78], p = 0.060). Overall, the current study lays the foundation for a more holistic testing of athletes and challenges traditional approaches to evaluating decision-making. Future iterations of the perceptual task could prove useful for talent identification and investigations of decision-making ability in basketball players.

Convocation Year

2026

Convocation Season

Fall

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Available for download on Wednesday, January 13, 2027

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