How do the results of this lab support (or not support) the view of humans as machines as discussed in Chapter two of Gleitman?
My results for this lab do not support the view of humans as machines. My times were very inconsistent and unpredictable, whereas if a machine had done the experiment they would not fluctuate. This is because humans, unlike machines, are prone to distractions presented by the environment and also are capable of thinking about other things while performing a task, rather than being programmed to focus on one certain activity. If humans were like machines, the reactions times for the stimulus and the response would have both been equal. However, this was not the case, showing that response time was dependent upon which part of the action the subject was concentrating on. Reaction time also generally got better with practice, which would not have happened if we were machine-like, because then our reaction times would stay relatively the same. Humans are prone to error whereas machines are more precise and closer to perfection.
It's interesting to note that I did not get better with practice, as a machine would not. However, my response times were not consistent, either. They were extremely varied, even when I wasn't distracted. No matter how hard I concentrated, there is no way I would be able to match the precision of a machine. And my results did change depending on whether I focused on the stimulus or the response, just as sarah tonin's did.
I also believe that my results do not support the view of humans like machines. Like many others have said, my results varied across the board. My fastest time was with my non-dominant hand and had more to do with expectation and anticipation than it did with any sort of actual response.
That being said, the nervous system is very much like a machine. With very little thinking about the specifics, when we saw the ruler drop, we closed our fingers to catch it. No one though, ok I just saw the ruler move, I must now make sure that signal makes it to my brain and tells my fingers what to do. Like a machine, our brain (and nervous system) was given a task. Once something set off that task, we preformed in exactly the same way. Sure the times varied but only maybe by 100 ms. Thats only 1/10 of a second. And these variations, like mentioned in other posts, could be due to anticipation and tricking our brains into thinking the task had already been set off.
I definitely think there are aspects of the nervous system that show just how machine like it is. While I would not say humans are machines for obvious reasons, there are some similarities.
