For the most part, the trend tended to be a decreasing one, in that the inches or reaction times decreased. This supports the idea that humans like machines, with a little time and practice can acquire and retain skills as well as perfect them.
I disagree with this assertion. My times on average improved with more trials, but I would not say that this implies we are as machines. I believe that in some cases, a machine's behavior can 'evolve' by recursively solving a problem with greater and greater efficiency. This does not apply here. The data fluctuated and did nothing to suggest that humans can repeat a task exactly the same way endlessly the way that a computer can. A computer would not have improved at this experiment in the same way. Given information about exactly how to approach the problem, it would close at exactly the same time, every time.
-- Edited by kid roland on Wednesday 16th of September 2009 01:51:30 AM
I can't agree with those assertions above. My reaction time was completely random and varied without any order. Some people say their graphs show their improvements but I couldn't find any improvement in my graph. Even my reaction time increased throughout the experiment! Humans can achieve skills when repeating something again and again. However, we are different from machines. Machines don't improve. If they improve, they will systemically improve in ascending order. We don't. Our graph can't be straight. My graph was spiky.
My results did not agree with the topic starter's conclusions. My reaction time for the dominant hand was scattered and the reaction time for the non dominant hand became worse. I think that although humans can acquire skills over time, eight trials per hand is not enough to really show any improvement. My results show that a human is different from a computer in that the way a human completes a task can vary and is not nearly as accurate as a computer.
My results differed from the OP. I found that the times for the non dominant hand were worse than the dominant hand in general, with both sets of times scattered with a slight improvement in the non dominant hand. I feel that while humans can improve in a task to a certain extent, machines or computers cannot.
I also have to disagree with the above statements that humans tend to behave more like machines. My right hand showed improved reaction times while my left hand's results showed varied and scattered times. Computers have qualities of consistency and improvement, and unlike computers, are results show that our accuracy is not nearly as consistent as a machines. Although practice does make perfect, 8 trials each hand cannot prove that humans can consistently reach perfection like machines.
I agree with Franklin Gaw that Humans arent like computers. We create more errors because we are more spontaneous and complex. Computers on the other hand, are programmed specifically to react to a situation. There is no way after just 8 times repeating the activity that we could compete with that.
-- Edited by 102intro on Wednesday 16th of September 2009 12:29:18 PM
I disagree with the idea that humans are like robots, as my trials show. They were inconsistent and chaotic at times. However, I assume that most of us that did this experiment were dedicating our full attention to this experiment, which obviously can lead to sudden variable trials. Computers, again assuming, wouldnt have distractions going on if they were put to the test of reaction time. But this can then reaffirm that we are not machines, because we have those distractions to consider when performing tests such as these.
