Undergraduate Honors Thesis
DO HUMANS PRIORITIZE TIME, ENERGY, INTENSITY… OR SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER WHEN MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT WALKING ON LEVEL VS. UPHILL SURFACES? Public Deposited
https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/w0892b67r
- Abstract
- During daily life, people walk from one point to another. Sometimes they choose to walk along designated paths; other times they take shortcuts. To determine how humans weigh costs like time, metabolic energy expenditure, and metabolic intensity, I studied subjects making walking decisions about walking up a hill vs. along a level surface for various distances. I hypothesized that subjects would be indifferent to walking uphill at an 8.5% grade vs. on the level when the two options required the same time or the same amount of metabolic energy. Further, I hypothesized that subjects would walk at speeds such that the level and uphill tasks had the same metabolic intensity. I found that most of the subjects (11/15) made overall pragmatic/logical choices, but some subjects (4/15) intentionally made non-pragmatic walking choices. In contrast to my hypotheses, the pragmatic subjects chose, on average, to spend 34% more time walking on the level as compared to uphill (P<0.001). They also chose to both expend 35% more metabolic energy (P<0.001) and walk at 75% greater metabolic intensities up the hill as compared to on the level (P<0.001). The walking choices made by the non-pragmatic subjects varied widely with regard to time. But like the pragmatic subjects, the non-pragmatic subjects chose to expend far more (153% more, P=0.005) metabolic energy and walked at much higher (82% higher, P<0.001) intensities during uphill walking.
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- Date Awarded
- 2019-01-01
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- Last Modified
- 2019-12-02
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Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Visibility | Actions |
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doHumansPrioritizeTimeEnergyIntensityOrSomethingElseA.pdf | 2019-11-30 | Public | Download |