Summary Of Move Over Mice By Kie F Dingfelder

Move Over, Mice by Sadie F. Dingfelder is an interesting article about the technological advances in computer programming. Robots are taking steps away from “thinking” like a computer to “thinking” more like a human. The title comes from the tradition of using mice in lab experiments. Now, psychologists can use robots to test their hypothesis.
The article begins with an assignment for students at the University of California. The students must babysit a robot over their summer break. The purpose of this assignment was to do a research study and see if the robot baby could learn the way a human baby would. It is thought that human babies are born with knowledge to recognize faces but this study indicated that that hypothesis is false. The
Psychologists are teaming up with computer scientists more often than ever to create programs that allow machines to complete tasks that a normal computer would be stumped by. Psychologists can now use these “smart” machines to study and experiment with.
The article goes on to say current computers will not get any better at what they do unless the software is improved. At Columbia University, programmers are writing programs that are able to change their own code. These are based on “machine learning algorithms” which are modeled after the structure of the human brain. Just like a human brain has neurons, the new program has units of information analysis that take in data and produce a signal. This type of program is less likely to break down.
I found it interesting that one of the studies in this article took place in Bloomington, Indiana at the 2006 International Conference on Development and Learning. Researchers were impressed to see a robot recognizing human faces in its environment. The robot in fact, took many pictures, some having human faces in them. The robot had the ability to recognize a face even if it was partially covered in