Many prepared actions have to be withheld for a certain amount of time in order to have the most beneficial outcome. Therefore, keeping track of time accurately is vital to using temporal regularities in our environment. Traditional theories assume that time is tracked by means of a clock and an “attentional gate” (AG) that modulates subjective time if not enough attentional resources are directed toward the temporal process. According to the AG theory, the moment of distraction does not have an influence on the subjective modulation. Here, we show, based on an analysis of 28,354 datasets, that highly motivated players of the online multiplayer real‐time strategy game StarCraft2 indeed respond later to timed events when they are distracted by other tasks during the interval. However, transient periods of distraction during the interval influence the response time to a lesser degree than distraction just before the required response. We extend the work of Taatgen, van Rijn, and Anderson (2007) and propose an alternative active check theory that postulates that distracted attention prevents people from checking their internal clock; we demonstrate that this account better predicts variance observed in response time. By analyzing StarCraft2 data, we assessed the role of attention in a naturalistic setting that more directly generalizes to real‐world settings than typical laboratory studies.

中文翻译：

---

注意力并不影响主观时间的速度，而是影响时间信息是否指导表现：实时策略游戏中内在动机计时器的大规模研究


许多准备好的行动必须暂停一段时间才能获得最有利的结果。因此，准确记录时间对于在我们的环境中利用时间规律至关重要。传统理论假设时间是通过时钟和“注意力门”（AG）来跟踪的，如果没有足够的注意力资源用于时间过程，则“注意力门”会调节主观时间。根据AG理论，分心时刻对主观调节没有影响。在这里，我们基于对 28,354 个数据集的分析表明，在线多人实时策略游戏《星际争霸 2》中积极性较高的玩家在休息期间因其他任务而分心时，确实会对定时事件做出较晚的响应。然而，在间隔期间短暂的分心对响应时间的影响程度比在所需响应之前的分心要小。我们扩展了 Taatgen、van Rijn 和 Anderson（2007）的工作，并提出了另一种主动检查理论，该理论假设注意力分散会阻止人们检查他们的生物钟；我们证明该帐户可以更好地预测响应时间中观察到的方差。通过分析《星际争霸 2》的数据，我们评估了注意力在自然环境中的作用，与典型的实验室研究相比，它更直接地推广到现实世界的环境。