I believe that my results does not demonstrate human beings being machines because of the constantly fluctuating results, and the general improvement that I experienced. As machines, these values should be fairly consistent which totally contradicts with my results.
I agree with you that there are noticeable differences between human beings and machines, with respect to the fact that machines are programmed to give a certain response to a certain stimulus (i.e. certain input produces certain output), and each response to for the same input should be the same each time, however, the results of reaction time I obtained from the lab were not consistent, but improved with more practice.
Dont know if we need to include our pen names but here it is anyways! pen name: nutella
I partially agree with the first post. My experimental data strongly suggested that humans are not like machines because even with the same stimuli, the response times fluctuated each time. But as humans, we are supposed to be able to learn and with practice become better (which means shorter response time) at catching the ruler. I believe that if the experimented was carried out a different way, humans would be able to cut down on response time through practice, and after a certain point, show similarities to machines after a certain point.
If the experimenter said, "Ready, Go." with similar lengths of pause between ready and go, the subject would be able to judge the timing of when the ruler would be dropped better, thus reducing the response time. But after a few trials, after practice is pushing the limits of how fast the subject can react to the same auditory stimuli, the subject will have response times that are consistent and similar to that of a machine. So maybe the thought that humans are like machines is plausible, if not true, with certain types of conditioning and situations?
