Class Activity "The Curious Inicident"

"The Curious Incident"

1. How Christopher perceives the world

What does this tell us about how Christopher's mind - and our minds - work?

The text tell us about the mind and the capacity that has Christopher to analyse everything that is around. We can infer that his mind is "superior" or not like the other human minds, because he is not lazy in terms of watching the things around, likenthe other people, that he says that are lazy.


What do most people choose to describe, and why? What do they see?

I think that most of the people choose the things that call they attention to describe. In other words, I think that the people describe and look the things that they think that are interesting. People don't remember esasily the things that they saw and that they don't think that are interesting. Also, people focus their attention in the most general aspects of what are they watching. i think that this is what Christopher tries to say when he say that people's minds are lazy.


Are people "lazy", as Christopher thinks? Or is it that we select in a different way?

No, I think that people select the things in a different way. As I said before, people see, or people focus their attention in what they find interesting, amd they remember that sort of things. Also, there are people that are very fixed in details, and others that only fix in general things. For example, Christopher is very fixed in details, but not all people are like him, but it doesn't mean that their are lazy.


Why should we select in a different way to Christopher - and reduce what we see?

Because if we are as fixed as Christopher, we can loose the attention that we are giving to the more important things. For example if I am so fixed like Christopher and someone is talking to us, we will not focus on what he/she is saying, and probably don't unerstand the following things that this person will say to us.


What governs the way we select what we perceive?

Again, I think that the think that governs the way we select what to perceive are our likes. As I said before, we focus our attention in the things that we like, and that call our attention (it sounds redundant). We don't perceive in a very detailed way the things that doesn't call our attention, but we perceive in a detailed way the things that we find interesting. I think that people do this unconciously.


What part does language play in the way we select our perceptions?

From my opinion, we also select the things through language. If we don't know how something is called, probably we will focus our attention in another thing that we know the name, and that we know what is. I tink that is the part that language plays in our perception. It "helps" our mind to select what to perceive, or in other words, our mind use language to select what to perceive. I think that most of the times we do this unconciously, not knowing that we are selecting all this things.