title: Simmba

text: Durva agrees and uses Simmba to free the land of an old person named Vaman Rao, who is forced to sign the papers by Simmba. Meanwhile, Simmba develops motherly and sisterly bonds with several women and girls, one of whom happens to be Aakruti Dave, a young woman who reminds Simmba of his teacher. Aakruti files a complaint against Sada and Giri for dealing illicit drugs in their pub and using children as peddlers. Simmba initially ignores this after being pacified by Durva, and Shagun, in the meantime, falls in love with him.


title: Simmba

text: Meanwhile, Aakruti learns about the drug racket in the club and goes there one night with Chhotu, a mute boy who's her student. She videotapes everything there by her cell phone to show evidence to the police but is caught by Sada and Giri. Chhotu discreetly records Sada and Giri assaulting Aakruti and flees once both of them realize. Aakruti is brutally killed by Sada and Giri. Chhotu tries to tell Aakruti's friend Kavya about Aakruti being in danger. Kavya whilst being chased by Durva's goons goes to Simmba to file Aakruti's missing complaint.


title: Simmba

text: Aakruti is found injured in hospital. Simmba tries to talk to her, but she dies, leaving him devastated. The police recover Aakruti's phone and the video which she shot, and Durva sends his goons to get the phone from Simmba, who is present, mends his ways, and fights them all. Simmba finally wears his police uniform, and seeing this change in him, Mohile finally salutes him as they arrest Sada and Giri. He apologises to Vaman Rao and returns the land swindled from him.


title: Simmba

text: In the court, Simmba is shocked to find Aakruti's video being deleted. He beats up Durva's friend, Corporator David Cameron, who gave a false statement in the court, leading to his suspension orders. He decides to kill Sada and Giri before he goes, and plans to show it as an encounter. He shoots them both and shows as if he killed them in the act of self-defence. An SIT committee is set up by the state, who question Simmba's encounter. Aiming to achieve clarity to the situation, Vinayak appoints a neutral officer to handle Aakruti's case, as well as Simmba's controversial encounter.


title: Simmba

text: Enraged, Durva and his goons capture Simmba. Suddenly, DCP Bajirao Singham arrives to rescue him, and both of them beat up Durva and his men. Singham tells Simmba that he is the neutral officer appointed by the state committee to handle his case and gives a statement that Simmba killed Sadashiv and Gaurav in the act of self-defence. He also calls Durva's mother Bharti and wife Varsha, who each state that it was Sada and Giri who assaulted Aakruti and that the brothers ran a drug racket and several other illegal activities.


title: Simmba

text: As a result of these crimes, Durva is sentenced to 7 years of rigorous imprisonment by the court. Singham reveals that he helped Simmba despite being against his corrupt actions so that he could instil a fear of law in the minds of men who do not respect women. When Singham leaves Miramar Police Station, he chats with DCP Veer Sooryavanshi on the phone. and also congratulates him on his new post as the ATS chief. Sooryavanshi tells him that he will meet him soon.


title: Simmba

text: It is a remake of the Telugu-language film "Temper" (2015). Shetty said, "We wanted to take four-five scenes from Temper but... thought it's better to buy the rights". The film has an estimated production budget of .


title: Simmba

text: Principal photography for "Simmba" began in June 2018. It was mainly filmed in Goa and Kolhapur, with some filming in Hyderabad and extra sequences filmed at Mehboob Studios in Mumbai.


title: Simmba

text: On 29 June 2018, the crew filmed the song, "Simmba Aala Re Aala Simmba Aala", at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad. On Instagram, Singh noted the large scale of the production and said that it was the biggest song of his career.


title: Simmba

text: Legal issues surrounding the production of Khan's debut-film "Kedarnath" interfered with the production of "Simmba". Khan was scheduled to shoot for both films around the same time. A lawsuit shut down the production of "Kedarnath" and Khan allotted the time to work on "Simmba". "Kedarnath's" director, Abhishek Kapoor, sued Khan because his film would be delayed and it would no longer mark the debut of Khan. The two settled out of court when Khan agreed to split her time between both films.


title: Simmba

text: In October 2018, lead actors Singh and Khan left for Switzerland to film a song sequence for the film. By late October, the crew had returned to Mumbai to film a second song, "Aankh Marey"—a remake of a 90s classic song.


title: Simmba

text: Because Singh was to be married in November 2018, Shetty shot most of the major sequences before the wedding date. Only the final sequence was left to be filmed after the wedding. A double for Singh was used to complete patch work of a dhaba fight scene in Goa; various camera angles were used so that the double would resemble Singh.


title: Simmba

text: The songs are composed by Tanishk Bagchi, Lijo George – DJ Chetas and S. Thaman while the lyrics are written by Shabbir Ahmed, Rashmi Virag, Kumaar and Kunaal Vermaa. The soundtrack album was released on 27 December 2018.


title: Simmba

text: The song "Aankh Maarey" is a remake of the song "Aankh Maare" from the 1996 film "Tere Mere Sapne", originally composed by Viju Shah and written by Anand Bakshi, sung by Kumar Sanu and Kavita Krishnamurthy, and picturised on Arshad Warsi and Simran; Warsi makes a cameo appearance in the "Simmba" version's music video, with Sanu's voice. The song was remade for the film, with the music reproduced by Tanishk Bagchi, S. Thaman and Chandan Saxena. The song "Tere Bin" is a recreation of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's 1996 qawwali song "Tere Bin Nahin Lagda". This is the second time the song is being recreated after 1999's film Kachche Dhaage which was titled "Tere Bin Nahin Jeena" sung by Lata Mangeshkar. The remake is sung by his nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan with Asees Kaur.


title: Simmba

text: "Simmba" was released in countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council on 27 December 2018. It was released in India and other countries on 28 December. It was shown on 4020 screens in India and 963 screens overseas, for a worldwide screen total of 4983 screens.


title: Simmba

text: On 6 June 2018, the producers announced the start of principal photography with a skit video featuring actors Singh and Khan, director Shetty, and producer Johar.


title: Simmba

text: On 6 December 2018, the first song from the film was released, titled "Aankh Marey," a remake of the original song from the 1996 hit film "Tere Mere Sapne". It is sung by Kumar Sanu (who also sung the original with Kavita Krishnamurthy), Mika Singh, and Neha Kakkar. Actor Arshad Warsi, whose film and song debut was with the original, appeared again in the video for the "Simmba" remake, along with several actors from another film from director Rohit Shetty, "Golmaal": Kunal Khemu, Shreyas Talpade, and Tusshar Kapoor. The release date for the remake was specifically chosen to coincide with the release date of the original 22 years earlier (6 December 1996).


title: Simmba

text: Ambica Schin of "Khaleej Times" gave the film four stars out of five and sums up, "If you are on the lookout for a totally masala, paisa vasool movie to end the year with a bang, we recommend you watch "Simmba". The melodramatic, over-the-top film is sure to leave you on a high". Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama declared it a "winner" with four stars out of five, writing, "Rohit borrows the essence from "Temper", but modifies a major chunk of that film... What eventually unfolds on screen is so different, in a positive way". Anwesha Madhukalya of "Business Today" wrote, "It is indeed time to rejoice for the young star's fans for Simmba has announced the arrival of Ranveer Singh in the big league".


title: Simmba

text: Writing for "The Times of India", Ronak Kotecha rated it three and a half stars out of five, terming the film as "a potboiler that you expect it to be, where the good surely outweighs the bad". Suparno Sarkar of "International Business Times" also gave it three and a half stars out of five, writing, ""Simmba" is a complete masala entertainer that is loaded with good dialogues, humour, heart-felt emotion and high-octane action. It lacks logic at various levels, but never ceases to entertain". A critic for "The Economic Times" agreed, also rating it three and a half stars out of five, but felt that "[t]he film takes a preachy turn in the second half and the narrative gets predictable".


title: Simmba

text: Writing for "Hindustan Times", Raja Sen rated the film three stars out of five, writing, "[A]s it stands, "Simmba" is not only ahead of "Singham", but far superior to "Dabangg", the blockbuster that defines the genre". He appreciated Singh for the energy he brought to the role, but found Khan was restricted by her role. Rajeev Masand of News18 gave the film two and a half stars out of five, finding the first half to be "a sporadically enjoyable comedy", but found the second half to be "less enjoying": "The film leaves a lot to be desired, but a star is re-born". Uday Bhatia of "Mint" concurred with Masand: but credited Singh for playing his "cardboard creation" of a character with an "underlying sweetness that renders it more winsome than the humourless masculinity of Devgan's Singham".


title: Simmba

text: The box office collection figures for the opening weekend of the film as presented on Bollywood Hungama are: The first day It earned 20.72 crore nett in India, which made it Singh's highest-opening film as of 2018. On second day it collected 23.33 crore nett and 31.06 crore on third day. The total first weekend nett domestic collection was 75.11 crore. The opening week pan-India collection was 150.81 crore, which made it a hit film.


title: Simmba

text: In its second week on the eighth day, domestic collection was 9.02 crore. On the ninth day, collection rose to 13.32 crore. Tenth day collection is 17.49 crore. Eleventh day collection is 6.16. Twelfth day collection is 6.03. Thirteen day collection is 5.31 and ending at 4.29 crore, taking second week collection to 61.62 crore. The domestic gross is 308.09 crore. It becomes Rohit Shetty's biggest hit as it beats lifetime business of Chennai Express.


title: Simmba

text: The film grossed from overseas markets as estimated by Bollywood Hungama. The gross worldwide is . It became third highest-grossing film of 2018. In Pakistan, the film has collected more than till its fifth weekend.


title: Simmba

text: "Smashing Simmba", an animated television series based on the film, was released on 14 November 2020 on Pogo TV.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: The Stanley Parable is a story-based video game designed and written by developers Davey Wreden and William Pugh. The game carries themes such as choice in video games, the relationship between a game creator and player, and predestination/fate.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: In the game, the player guides a silent protagonist named Stanley alongside narration by British actor Kevan Brighting. As the story progresses, the player is confronted with diverging pathways. The player may contradict the narrator's directions, which if disobeyed will then be incorporated into the story. Depending on the choices made, the player will encounter different endings before the game resets to the beginning.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: "The Stanley Parable" was originally released on 31 July 2011, as a free modification for "Half-Life 2" by Wreden. Together with Pugh, Wreden later released a stand-alone remake using the Source engine under the Galactic Cafe studio name. The remake recreated many of the original mod's choices while adding new areas and story pathways, as well as overhauling the game's graphics entirely. It was announced and approved via Steam Greenlight in 2012, and was released on 17 October 2013, for Microsoft Windows. Later updates to the game added support for macOS on 19 December 2013, and for Linux on 9 September 2015. A further expanded edition titled The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe was released on 27 April 2022. It is available on consoles in addition to previously supported platforms and it includes additional content, as well as further refined graphics.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Both the original mod and its two remakes have received critical praise from journalists. Critics praised the game's narrative and commentary on player choice and decision-making.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: The player has a first-person perspective, and can travel and interact with certain elements of the environment, such as pressing buttons or opening doors, but has no combat or other action-based controls.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: The narrator presents the story to the player. He explains that the protagonist Stanley is employee 427 in an office building. Stanley is tasked to monitor data coming from a computer screen and press buttons appropriately without question. One day, the screen monitoring data goes blank, which has never happened before. Stanley, unclear on what to do, begins to explore the building and discovers that the workplace is completely abandoned.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: At this stage, the story splits off in numerous possibilities, based on the player's choices. When the player comes to an area where a choice is possible, the player can opt to follow the narrator's directions or perform the opposing action. The initial decision is a set of two open doors. The narrator notes that Stanley traveled through the leftmost door, but this has not yet occurred. The narrator takes the player's choices into account, reacting with new narration or attempts to return the player back to the target path if he is contradicted. For example, if the player were to follow the narrator's directions and pass through the leftmost door, the story of the missing employees proceeds. Alternatively, the player can choose the rightmost door, causing the narrator to adjust his story. In this case, he will urge the player to return to the "proper" path, although the player can continuously disobey the narrator, resulting in other adjustments to the story. In some instances, the narrator breaks the fourth wall when reacting to the player's decisions.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: In the original 2011 mod, there were six different endings. Wreden stated it would take about an hour for the player to experience them all. The 2013 remake added more than ten endings, altered some pre-existing endings and the respective routes to trigger them, as well as several Easter eggs, and other choice-related aspects.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: "Ultra Deluxe" expands on the game's endings further, including further routes, new environments, and alternate endings.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Within the "Ultra Deluxe" content is a series of endings that trigger the next. The player as Stanley discovers a new area of the game proclaiming "new content", but to the narrator's dismay, the content is extremely minimal. On the next reset of the game, the narrator guides Stanley to a new area called the Memory Zone, which recounts all the praise that "The Stanley Parable" had gotten, but soon find an area full of Steam (referred to as "Pressurized Gas" in the console versions) user reviews that are critical of the game, which leads the narrator to further distress that "The Stanley Parable" was not good enough. On another reset, the narrator guides Stanley to a showcase of features for "The Stanley Parable 2", among which includes collectible figurines to seek in the game, and a "reassurance bucket", which appears in subsequent playthroughs and can be used to alter most initial endings of the game. After further replays of the game, the player revisits the Memory Zone to discover "The Stanley Parable 2" has received an extremely negative reception. In all subsequent playthroughs, sequel numbers are added progressively to "The Stanley Parable" with a randomly generated subtitle, but otherwise no further changes to content.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Davey Wreden, 22 years old at the time of the mod's release, was inspired to create "The Stanley Parable" about three years prior, after considering the typical storytelling narratives within video games, and thinking of what would happen if the player would go against that narration; he also saw this as a means towards his planned career as a game developer. As a video game player, Wreden found that most major triple-A titles at the time made many assumptions about the player's experience and fitted that within the game, and rarely provided answers for "what if" questions that the player may consider. Wreden believed that recent games with more engaging or thought-provoking stories, including the "Metal Gear Solid" series, "Half-Life 2", "Portal", "Braid", and "BioShock", started to approach this void, giving reason for the player to stop and think about the narration instead of simply going through the motions. Though his initial intent was a personal project simply to try to make such a game that asked the questions about why people play video games, Wreden found that there were other gamers that had been considering the same type of questions. He set out to make a game that would be the subject of discussion for players after they completed it. According to Wreden, his design document for the game was "Mess with the player's head in every way possible, throwing them off-guard, or pretending there's an answer and then kinda whisking it away from in front of them."


title: The Stanley Parable

text: With no prior experience working with the Source engine, Wreden relied heavily on information and help from wikis and forums on the Source Development Kit, teaching himself the fundamentals. Outside of Kevan Brighting's voice-over contributions, "The Stanley Parable" was all Wreden's work. Wreden used an audition process to find a narrator, and found Brighting's submission to be ideal for the game. Brighting had provided his voice in a single pass. Wreden wanted to keep the game short so as to allow players to experience all the endings without spending an excessive amount of time replaying the game. The shortness of the game would also allow him to introduce ridiculous and nonsense endings, such as "and then everything was happy!", that would otherwise insult the player as a poor reward for completing a long game. Most of the ideas he had envisioned for the game were included, though some had to be dropped due to his inability to figure out how to work with them within the Source engine. In one case, Wreden wanted to include a point where the player would have to press buttons as the narration and screen prompts would have said, but could not figure out how to bind keyboard input to do this, but left the element in there as a "broken" puzzle; he later was praised for this, as to players, this gave the impression of lacking control during the stage of narration. Despite the success of completing the game, Wreden considered the overall project "grueling" and stifling his career ambition, noting that his efforts became more intense once he started learning of other players' interest in the title.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Wreden initially tested the game with a friend before posting the mod to the website ModDB, a few weeks prior to his graduation from college. After graduating, Wreden had left for Australia with intent to open a video game-themed bar similar to the Mana Bar, which he had worked at for about a year, but his future plans changed with success of the mod. Wreden had started to receive various offers from others to help work on new games as well as some job offers from larger developers which he turned down, as at the time it was "not the kind of scene" he wanted to work in. Instead, he started to gather other independent programmers to work out an improved version of "The Stanley Parable" and leading towards a completely new title in the future.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Shortly after the release of the original mod, Wreden was contacted by William Pugh, a player who had experience in creating environments within the Source engine and had previously won a Saxxy Award for his work. Pugh had heard of the mod through word of mouth, and after being impressed with playing it, saw that Wreden was looking for help for improving the mod. The two collaborated each day for two years for the revamped mod. Though initially Wreden wanted to recreate the original game "beat for beat", his discussions with Pugh led to them deciding to alter existing material and add more, an "interpolation" of the original game, and creating a stand-alone title. The remake includes the six endings from the original, as well as updating the game with several newly created endings. Brighting returned to voice the narrator in the remake, as Wreden considered his performance "half the reason this game has been successful". Additionally, a custom soundtrack was created for the remake, composed by Blake Robinson, Yiannis Ioannides, and Christiaan Bakker.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: In play-testing the newer version, Pugh found that players did not respond well to having a preconceived idea of where the divergent points in the game took place, as represented by a flowchart early in the game, and this was taken out. However, Pugh also found that without some visual cues as to where divergent paths occurred, they would often miss these choices, and so added elements like colors to highlight that a choice was available at these points. In the original modification, one route travels the player to sections modeled after elements in "Half-Life 2". In the remake, Pugh and Wreden included one route where the player is dropped into a "Minecraft" world, and another where the player briefly revisits the opening of "Portal," before being trapped in the original 2011 mod version of "The Stanley Parable". These routes were included after getting approval from their creators Markus Persson and Valve, respectively.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: To distribute the new version, the team initially considered a pay what you want scheme, but later sought the use of the Steam Greenlight service, where independent developers can solicit votes from other players in order to have Valve subsequently offer the title through Steam. In October 2012, the game was successfully approved by Valve to be included on Steam upon the game's completion. Although Wreden originally called the stand-alone version "The Stanley Parable: HD Remix", he later opted to drop the distinguishing title, affirming that he believed the remake is the "definitive" version of the game. The macOS version (requiring 10.8 or later) was later released on December 19, 2013, expanding to support for Linux on September 9, 2015.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: In August 2016, Galactic Cafe partnered with IndieBox, a monthly subscription box service, to create an exclusive, custom-designed, physical release of the game. This limited collector's edition included a DRM-free game CD, the official soundtrack, an instruction manual, a Steam key, and various collectibles including an "Adventure Tie" and "Existential Mousepad".


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Wreden and Pugh announced that the remake would be released on Steam on October 17, 2013, and accompanied the announcement with a playable demo. Instead of a traditional demo in which the player is shown a small section of the full game, "The Stanley Parable Demo" features entirely original content, which was developed to give the player the flavor of the game, using similar concepts of misconceptions and non-linear storytelling that would be present in the final game. The developers found that using a section of the game, taken out of context, left play-testers confused and annoyed with no understanding of that section without including the prior monologues. Wreden stated "the best way to convey what our game is about is through an additional piece of content, completely separate from the main game, that carries the style and tone of the main game without actually spoiling it." This includes a section modeled after a waiting room, which was one of the first elements designed for the demo. According to Wreden, "It catalyzed this sense that even very mundane tasks like sitting in a waiting room are fun if they're not what you're ‘supposed' to be doing".


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Personalized versions of the demos were created by Wreden for "Game Grumps" and Adam Sessler of Revision3 for Let's Play to promote the 2013 remake. These editions included some rerecorded lines directed at these players; Wreden considered that based on the higher-than-average viewership for these videos that this helped towards marketing of the game, and that the demo received similar coverage as the full title. This effectively helped generate media buzz equal to two game titles for the next two months of work it took to create the specialized demo.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: At The Game Awards 2018, an expanded edition of the game entitled "The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe" was announced. It was planned for release in 2019 for existing platforms and for consoles. "Ultra Deluxe" is a joint release by Galactic Cafe and Pugh's Crows Crows Crows. The game was ported to the Unity game engine to support consoles. Additional content was added to this version as well. In November 2019, the studios announced their decision to delay "Ultra Deluxe" with a mid-2020 release. To generate interest in "Ultra Deluxe", the 2013 remake was made available for free for a limited time in March 2020 on the Epic Games Store.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: The game was further delayed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2021, the game's publisher Crows Crows Crows announced that the game would be further delayed and would be released in early 2022. Wreden has gone on to state that the script for "Ultra Deluxe"s new content is longer than the script of the entire original game. The game was released on April 27, 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, in addition to Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux through Steam, with owners of the 2013 remake on Steam receiving a discount on "Ultra Deluxe" for the first two weeks of release. The release date, April 27, is a reference to Stanley's employee number (4/27).


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Within two weeks of its release, the mod was downloaded more than 90,000 times. Responses of most players were positive, and Wreden became "an overnight internet sensation among hardcore gamers."


title: The Stanley Parable

text: "The Stanley Parable" mod was acclaimed by journalists as a thought-provoking game, praising it for being a highly experimental game that only took a short amount of time for the player to experience. Many journalists encouraged players to experience the game themselves, desiring to avoid spoilers that would affect the player's experience, and to offer discussions about the game within their sites' forums. Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica noted that while the game purportedly gives the player choice, many of these end up lacking an effect, as "to feel like you're in more control than you are". Brighting's voice work was considered a strong element, providing the right dry British wit to the complex narration. Alex Aagaard from "WhatCulture" believes that "The Stanley Parable" "will be regarded as one of the most pioneering games of all time" during video games' transition from entertainment to a legitimate and respected art form.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: The game was listed as an honorable mention for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and "Excellence in Narrative" award at the 15th Annual Independent Games Festival. "The Stanley Parable" received the Special Recognition award at IndieCade 2012.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: The 2013 remake has received critical acclaim from reviewers. At Metacritic, as of March 2020, the game holds an 88/100 score based on 47 critic reviews. "Forbes" listed Wreden in its 2013 "30 Under 30" leaders in the field of games for the success and marketing of "The Stanley Parable". For his work on the game, William Pugh was named as one of 18 "Breakthrough Brits" for 2014 by BAFTA.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Some critics focused on the game's themes of existentialism. Brenna Hillier of VG247 opined how the stand-alone game highlighted the current problems in writing story-driven games, and that "it takes the very limitations of traditional gaming narratives and uses them to ruthlessly expose their own flaws". Ashton Raze of "The Telegraph" considered that the game "offers ... a look at, not a critique of ... the nature of narrative construction" that can be a factor in other video games. The remake won the Audience Award and was nominated in the categories of "Excellence in Narrative" and "Excellence in Audio" along with being named as a finalist for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for the 2014 Independent Games Festival Awards. The game was nominated for "Best Story", "Best Debut Game", and "Game Innovation" awards for the 2014 BAFTA Video Games Awards, while Brighting's performance was nominated for the "Performer" award. At the 2013 National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) awards the game won "Writing in a Comedy" and "Performance in a Comedy, Lead" (Kevan Brighting as "Narrator").


title: The Stanley Parable

text: Wreden reported that more than 100,000 sales were made within the first three days of being available; this was far more revenue than he was expecting, considering that sales from these three days would be enough to allow him to live comfortably and become a full-time developer for the next five years. The game had sold over one million copies in less than a year. The game's demo was received similarly well, and Wreden considered it a key part in the full game's success. IGN's Luke Reilly listed "The Stanley Parable"s demo as one of the top six demos in video games, citing how it is "an entirely standalone exercise designed to prepare [the player] for the unique player and narrator relationship that forms the core of "The Stanley Parable" experience".


title: The Stanley Parable

text: A patch was later released for the game shortly after its release to replace imagery used in a 1950s-style instructional video that some players found racially offensive, with Wreden writing "[W]e always wanted the game to be something that could be played by anyone of any age. If a person would feel less comfortable showing the game to their children then I've got no problem helping fix that!" Following the remake, Wreden began developing his next title, "The Beginner's Guide", which was released in October 2015, while Pugh set up the independent studio Crows Crows Crows. Their first game was "", released in December 2015.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: On the day following the release of "The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe", Crows Crows Crows announced on Twitter that the game has sold more than 100,000 copies on Steam within the first 24 hours of being available.


title: The Stanley Parable

text: In May 2014, an announcer pack featuring the voice of the Narrator was released for the multiplayer online battle arena game "Dota 2".


title: The Stanley Parable

text: The Narrator appears as an optional announcer for "Johann Sebastian Joust" in the 2014 game compilation "Sportsfriends".


title: The Stanley Parable

text: "The Stanley Parable" appeared during episode 7 of the third season of "House of Cards"—with other games such as "Monument Valley" appearing throughout the season—where President Frank Underwood is being shown the game by a novelist and video game reviewer who is writing his biography, where the puzzling nature of the game's ability to contradict narrative elements was used as a metaphor for the current politics in the show's fiction.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The New 7 Wonders of the World was a campaign started in 2000 to choose Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments. The popularity poll via free Web-based voting and small amounts of telephone voting was led by Canadian-Swiss Bernard Weber and organized by the New 7 Wonders Foundation (N7W) based in Zurich, Switzerland, with winners announced on 7 July 2007 in Lisbon, at Estádio da Luz. The poll was considered unscientific partly because it was possible for people to cast multiple votes. According to John Zogby, founder and current President/CEO of the Utica, New York-based polling organization Zogby International, New 7 Wonders Foundation drove "the largest poll on record".


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The program drew a wide range of official reactions. Some countries touted their finalist and tried to get more votes cast for it, while others downplayed or criticized the contest. After supporting the New 7 Wonders Foundation at the beginning of the campaign by providing advice on nominee selection, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), by its bylaws having to record all and give equal status to world heritage sites, distanced itself from the undertaking in 2001 and again in 2007.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The seven winners were chosen from 21 candidates, which had been whittled down from 77 choices by a panel in 2006.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The New 7 Wonders Foundation, established in 2001, relied on private donations and the sale of broadcast rights and received no public funding. After the final announcement, New 7 Wonders said it did not earn anything from the exercise and barely recovered its investment. Although N7W describes itself as a not-for-profit organization, the company behind it—the New Open World Corporation (NOWC)—is a commercial business. All licensing and sponsorship money is paid to NOWC.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The foundation ran two subsequent programs: New 7 Wonders of Nature, the subject of voting until 2011, and New7Wonders Cities, which ended in 2014.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The campaigns and the organization are sometimes spelled as multiple words and sometimes as a single word.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The Great Pyramid of Giza, largest and oldest of the three pyramids at the Giza Necropolis in Egypt and the only surviving of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was granted honorary status.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: In 2007, the New 7 Wonders Foundation contracted a partnership with the United Nations in recognition of the efforts to promote the UN's Millennium Development Goals.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: However, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in a press release on June 20, 2007, reaffirmed that it has no link with the initiative. The press release concluded:


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: In Brazil there was a campaign "Vote no Cristo" (Vote for the Christ) which had the support of private companies, namely telecommunications operators that stopped charging voters to make telephone calls and SMS messages to vote. Additionally, leading corporate sponsors including Banco Bradesco and Rede Globo spent millions of reals in the effort to have the statue voted into the top seven. "Newsweek" reports the campaign was so pervasive that:


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: According to an article in "Newsweek", around 10 million Brazilians had voted in the contest by early July. This number is estimated as the New 7 Wonders Foundation never released such details about the campaign. An airplane message, with a huge inscription "4916 VOTE FOR CHRIST" flew in Rio de Janeiro for a month.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: An intensive campaign led by the Peruvian Ministry of Commerce and Tourism in Peru had a great impact in the media and consequently, Peruvian people voted massively for its national wonder. The announcement of the new World Wonders generated great expectations and the election of Machu Picchu was celebrated nationwide.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: The Chilean representative for Easter Island's Moais, Alberto Hortus, said Weber gave him a letter saying that the Moais had finished eighth and were morally one of the New 7 Wonders. Hortus said he was the only participant to receive such an apology.


title: New 7 Wonders of the World

text: A campaign to publicize the Taj Mahal in India gathered speed and it reached a climax in July 2007 with news channels, radio stations, and many celebrities asking people to vote for the Taj Mahal.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Drew McQueen Bledsoe (born February 14, 1972) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons, primarily with the New England Patriots. He played college football at Washington State, where he won Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year as a junior, and was selected by the Patriots first overall in the 1993 NFL Draft. Considered the face of the Patriots franchise during his nine seasons with the team, Bledsoe helped improve New England's fortunes from 1993 to 2001. Under Bledsoe, the Patriots ended a seven-year postseason drought, qualified for the playoffs four times, clinched their division twice, and made a Super Bowl appearance in Super Bowl XXXI. He was also named to three Pro Bowls and became the youngest quarterback to play in the NFL's all-star game with his 1995 appearance.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Following a period of declining success and two consecutive seasons in which the Patriots missed the playoffs, Bledsoe suffered a near-fatal injury early in the 2001 season that led to backup Tom Brady becoming the team's starter. He was unable to regain his starting position for the remainder of the season due to Brady's success, which led to the Patriots winning their first championship in Super Bowl XXXVI and began a dynasty for the franchise. Bledsoe subsequently played three seasons with the Buffalo Bills, where he made a fourth Pro Bowl appearance, and his final two with the Dallas Cowboys.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: While his tenure with the Patriots would be eclipsed by Brady, Bledsoe is recognized for helping rebuild the franchise and his role during their first Super Bowl-winning season when he relieved an injured Brady to help win the . For his accomplishments in New England, he was inducted to the Patriots Hall of Fame in 2011.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe attended Walla Walla High School and was a letterman in football, basketball, and track. In football, he was named a first-team All-State selection by the "Tacoma News Tribune". In track, he competed in the throwing events, recording top-throws of in the discus throw and in the javelin throw.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe spent his college career at Washington State University in Pullman back in 1990, where he went on to have a record-setting career in his 3 years there. After gaining the starting job at the end of the 1990 season as a true freshman (joined later by Jeff Tuel and Jayden de Laura as the only three in school history), he quickly became the face of the Cougars' offense. In 1992, Bledsoe led WSU to a 9–3 record (ranking #17 in the coaches poll and #15 in the AP) and a 31–28 win over Utah in the Copper Bowl in which Bledsoe completed 30 of 46 passes for 476 yards and two touchdowns. He also established WSU records in single-game passing yards (476), single-season pass completions (241), and single-season passing yards (3,246). He was named the Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Following an impressive junior year in 1992, Bledsoe decided to forgo his senior season and enter the 1993 NFL Draft. In the 34 starts of his collegiate career he amassed 7,373 yards, 532 completions and 46 touchdowns.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe was the first overall selection in the 1993 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots. He started right away for the Patriots in his rookie season, as they improved from two to five wins.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: On November 13, 1994, the Patriots had won just three of their first nine games and were losing, 20–3, to the Minnesota Vikings at halftime. Bledsoe led a comeback victory in which the Patriots won, 26–20, in overtime, as he set single-game records in pass completions (45) and attempts (70). The win sparked the beginning of a new age for the Patriots, as they rallied behind Bledsoe and won their final six games to finish with a 10–6 record and capture the wild card spot; however, they lost to the Cleveland Browns in the wild-card round 13–20. Due to his performance, Bledsoe was selected to his first Pro Bowl as an alternate.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Following a difficult 1995 season, Bledsoe turned it around in 1996 ranking among the top passers in the league with the help of wide receiver Terry Glenn, thus pushing the Patriots to reach the playoffs again and winning the AFC championship over the Jacksonville Jaguars, 20–6. This led to an appearance in Super Bowl XXXI, where they lost to the Green Bay Packers, 35–21. Bledsoe completed 25 of 48 passes for 253 yards, two touchdowns, and four interceptions in the loss. He was also named a starter for the Pro Bowl that season, the second of his career.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: During the 1997 season, Bledsoe helped the Patriots win five of their final seven games to once again qualify for the playoffs, the fourth time in eight years as a Patriots starter he would lead the team to a postseason appearance. The Patriots lost in the second round to the Pittsburgh Steelers; however, Bledsoe built a career-high 87.7 passer rating, passed for 3,706 yards, tossed 28 touchdowns, and earned his third Pro Bowl invitation.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: The following year, he became the first NFL quarterback to complete game-winning touchdown passes in the final 30 seconds of two consecutive games. In doing so, he propelled New England into the postseason for the third straight year. He completed these come-from-behind efforts while playing with a broken index finger on his throwing hand, an injury that would later sideline him for the postseason.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe started the 1999 season very strong, with thirteen touchdowns and only four interceptions as the Patriots held a 6–2 mid-season record. However, Bledsoe subsequently threw only six touchdowns versus seventeen interceptions, and the team finished with an 8–8 record, while Bledsoe was sacked a career-high 55 times. The team's slide continued into the 2000 season as the Patriots ended with a record of 5–11. Bledsoe threw a then-career low thirteen interceptions that year but he was sacked 45 times.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: In March 2001, Bledsoe signed a then-record ten-year, $103 million contract. During the second game of the 2001 season, Bledsoe was racing toward the sideline on third-and-10 when New York Jets linebacker Mo Lewis leveled him with a hard, but clean hit. Bledsoe was about to dive for the first down marker, but defensive end Shaun Ellis clipped Bledsoe's ankles as he was about to dive, resulting in Lewis hitting Bledsoe while he was standing straight up. With Bledsoe appearing to have suffered a concussion, backup Tom Brady came in to finish the game. After the game, team trainer Ron O'Neill suspected Bledsoe did not look right and asked Bledsoe to come to the medical room for evaluation. Team doctor Bert Zarins ran some tests and discovered Bledsoe's heart was racing. Zarins realized that this was something much more serious than a concussion; normally, concussed people have their heart rates tail off dramatically. Bledsoe was rushed to the hospital, where it was discovered that Lewis' hit had sheared a blood vessel in his chest, causing a hemothorax that had him bleeding a pint of blood an hour.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Brady took the starting job and led New England to the playoffs. Bledsoe would never regain his starting role (Brady played 19 seasons in New England), although he proved integral to his team's playoff run when he replaced a hobbled Brady in the against Pittsburgh. Bledsoe, starting from the Steelers' 40-yard line, capped a scoring drive with an 11-yard touchdown pass to David Patten to give the Patriots a 14–3 lead, as well as all of the momentum going into halftime. With the Steelers trailing by four points in the fourth quarter, Bledsoe put together a 45-yard drive to put the Patriots in field goal range where Adam Vinatieri converted to make the score 24–17. Bledsoe later drove New England into Steelers territory to set up a 50-yard kick to seal the game, however Vinatieri missed and the ball went back to Pittsburgh. The Patriots defense held, and with a final score of 24–17 the upset was complete and the Patriots moved onto the Super Bowl. In winning the conference championship game, Bledsoe completed 10 of 21 passes for 102 yards and a touchdown, with no interceptions. It was the second time in six years (1996 and 2001) that Bledsoe was an integral part in leading the Patriots to a Super Bowl appearance, and during the on-field trophy presentation Bledsoe tossed his father a game ball. Brady started as quarterback as the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI, with kicker Vinatieri hitting a game-winning 48-yard field goal as time expired.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: With Brady entrenched as the starter, Bledsoe was traded to the Patriots' division rival, the Buffalo Bills. Patriots fans appreciated Bledsoe's lengthy tenure and his role in improving the team, and cheered him in each of his three returns to New England as a visiting player.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Being sent to the Bills seemed to give Bledsoe a bit of rejuvenation in 2002. He had one of his best seasons ever, passing for 4,359 yards and 24 touchdowns and making his fourth trip to the Pro Bowl. In Week 2 against the Minnesota Vikings, Bledsoe set a team record with 463 yards passing in an overtime win. He continued his strong play in 2003 as the Bills began the year 2–0. However, a flurry of injuries stymied the Bills offense; they failed to score a touchdown in three consecutive games en route to a 6–10 season. In 2004, they fell one game short of making the playoffs; a late season winning streak was wasted when Bledsoe and the Bills performed poorly against the Pittsburgh Steelers backups in the season finale, finishing with a record of 9-7.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe was released by the Bills after the 2004 season to make way for first-round draft pick J. P. Losman to become the starter. When Bledsoe was later signed by the Dallas Cowboys, he expressed bitterness with the Bills for the move, stating "I can't wait to go home and dress my kids in little stars and get rid of the other team's [Buffalo's] stuff."


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe went on to sign with the Dallas Cowboys, where he was reunited with former coach Bill Parcells and wide receiver Terry Glenn. Bledsoe was intended to be a long-term solution as quarterback for the Cowboys. Said Bledsoe on the day he signed with Dallas, "Bill [Parcells] wants me here, and being the starter. I anticipate that being the case and not for one year." He signed for $23 million for three years.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: During his tenure with the Cowboys, he threw for over 3,000 yards in a season for the ninth time in his career, tying Warren Moon for fourth in NFL history. That season, Bledsoe led five 4th-quarter/OT game-winning drives to keep the Cowboys' playoff hopes alive until the final day of the season. Though the team ultimately failed to reach the playoffs, Bledsoe had led them to a 9–7 record, an improvement over the 6–10 mark that Vinny Testaverde had finished with in 2004.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: However, in 2006, his final season with the Cowboys, Bledsoe's play became erratic, so much so that six games into the season he was replaced by future Pro Bowler Tony Romo. Shortly after the end of the 2006 season, Bledsoe was released by the Cowboys. Unwilling to be relegated to a backup position, Bledsoe announced his retirement from the NFL on April 11, 2007.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: When Bledsoe retired in April 2007, he left fifth in NFL history in pass attempts (6,717) and completions (3,839), seventh in passing yards (44,611), and thirteenth in touchdown passes (251).


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: On May 16, 2011, Bledsoe was voted by Patriots fans into the Patriots Hall of Fame. He was formally inducted in a public ceremony outside The Hall at Patriot Place on September 17, 2011. Bledsoe beat former head coach Bill Parcells and defensive lineman Houston Antwine in a fan vote.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: In July 2012, Bledsoe was named the 30th-greatest quarterback of the NFL's post-merger era by "Football Nation".


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: In January 2018, Bledsoe was named honorary captain of the New England Patriots as they hosted the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Championship Game. Bledsoe's Patriots had beaten the Jaguars 20–6 in the 1996 AFC Championship Game to advance to their second Super Bowl. Patriots owner Robert Kraft said in a statement "Drew Bledsoe played such an integral role in our efforts to rebuild the Patriots. He gave fans hope for the future by providing many memorable moments during his record-breaking career. For a franchise that had only hosted one playoff game in its first 35 years, winning the AFC Championship Game at home in Foxborough and taking the Patriots to the playoffs for three consecutive years were unimaginable goals prior to his arrival." The Patriots defeated the Jaguars 24–20 to advance to their tenth Super Bowl appearance and Bledsoe presented the Lamar Hunt Trophy to Kraft.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe's parents were school teachers in Ellensburg, Washington. His mother was a teacher at Lewis & Clark Middle School, located in Yakima, Washington. His father was a coach who ran a football camp in Washington state, and Drew was able to interact with the professional players and coaches who helped his father run the camp. He is the fourth cousin once removed of actor, Neal Bledsoe.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: The Bledsoe family moved five times before Drew was in sixth grade. They finally settled in Walla Walla, Washington, where Bledsoe's father coached football at the high school. The only time Drew played a whole season of football without ever starting at quarterback was in seventh grade at Pioneer Junior High. In high school, with his father as his coach, he won numerous awards, including selection to the Western 100 and Washington State Player of the Year. Heavily recruited by colleges such as Miami and Washington, he decided to attend Washington State, which was a mere two-hour drive from home.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Drew and his wife Maura live in Bend, Oregon, where Maura (née Healy) has family ties, and have four children: sons Stuart, John, Henry, and daughter Healy. He coached his sons, Stuart and John, at Summit High School. John was a walk-on player on the Washington State football team in 2017. Due to Bledsoe's growing wine business, he travels to Walla Walla regularly, sometimes more than once in a given week; he and Maura plan to move to Walla Walla after their youngest child graduates from high school in 2021.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: While playing for the New England Patriots, Bledsoe lived in Bridgewater, Massachusetts and Medfield, Massachusetts; his Medfield house was later purchased by former Major League Baseball player Curt Schilling.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: After his retirement in 2007, Bledsoe founded the Doubleback Winery along with close friend Chris Figgins. After the 2014 vintage, Figgins left Doubleback and handed his interest in the business to his protege Josh McDaniels (not related to the Patriots assistant coach of the same name). The company's grapes, mostly Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, are harvested from McQueen Vineyards and Flying B Vineyards, located in and around Walla Walla, Washington. The wine saw some critical success and placed 53rd overall in "Wine Spectator" Top 100 wines in 2010. His first vintage, 2007, quickly sold out of its initial 600 cases. In 2012, Marvin R. Shanken invited Ernie Els, Greg Norman, Tom Seaver, and Bledsoe to introduce his wines, despite Shanken's disdain for the New England Patriots. He also recorded a message to both Tony Romo and Dak Prescott in 2017 in his home, which also showed his red wine collection. In 2021, Drew purchased an property in Oregon’s Eola-Amity Hills AVA with his winemaker and business partner Josh McDaniels.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe has held the position of offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at Summit High School since 2012.


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: While Bledsoe has thrown for a high number of yards and attempts, a frequent criticism is that they are based on volume (attempts, completions, yards) rather than efficiency (passer rating, TD-to-INT ratio, yards per attempt) proving only that he has thrown a great number of times, not that he has thrown well. According to sports writer Don Banks, Bledsoe's large career totals "reveal more about his longevity than about his excellence".


title: Drew Bledsoe

text: Bledsoe ranks fifth all time in completions (3,839), seventh in passing yards (44,611), and thirteenth in touchdown passes (251). Bledsoe's passer rating of 77.1 was 46th all-time in league history when he retired in 2006. As of 2022, he ranks 109th in league history. His 57.2% completion percentage is tied for 99th in league history. Bledsoe's 37 regular season 300-yard passing games ranks ninth in league history. He also ranks sixth in most career regular-season 400-yard passing games by an NFL quarterback, having done it six times. He was selected to the Pro Bowl four times (in 1994, 1996, 1997, 2002). Bledsoe was eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011.


Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. It was originated by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it. Piaget's theory is mainly known as a developmental stage theory.


title: Piaget's theory of cognitive development

text: In 1919, while working at the Alfred Binet Laboratory School in Paris, Piaget "was intrigued by the fact that children of different ages made different kinds of mistakes while solving problems". His experience and observations at the Alfred Binet Laboratory were the beginnings of his theory of cognitive development.


text: He believed that children of different ages made different mistakes because of the “quality rather than quantity” of their intelligence. Piaget proposed four stages to describe the development process of children: sensorimotor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage. Each stage describes a specific age group. In each stage, he described how children develop their cognitive skills. For example, he believed that children experience the world through actions, representing things with words, thinking logically, and using reasoning.


text: To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience. He believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment, then adjust their ideas accordingly. Moreover, Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the center of the human organism, and language is contingent on knowledge and understanding acquired through cognitive development. Piaget's earlier work received the greatest attention.


text: Child-centered classrooms and "open education" are direct applications of Piaget's views. Despite its huge success, Piaget's theory has some limitations that Piaget recognized himself: for example, the theory supports sharp stages rather than continuous development (horizontal and vertical décalage).


text: Piaget noted that reality is a dynamic system of continuous change. Reality is defined in reference to the two conditions that define dynamic systems. Specifically, he argued that reality involves transformations and states. "Transformations" refer to all manners of changes that a thing or person can undergo. "States" refer to the conditions or the appearances in which things or persons can be found between transformations. For example, there might be changes in shape or form (for instance, liquids are reshaped as they are transferred from one vessel to another, and similarly humans change in their characteristics as they grow older), in size (a toddler does not walk and run without falling, but after 7 yrs of age, the child's sensorimotor anatomy is well developed and now acquires skill faster), or in placement or location in space and time (e.g., various objects or persons might be found at one place at one time and at a different place at another time). Thus, Piaget argued, if human intelligence is to be adaptive, it must have functions to represent both the transformational and the static aspects of reality. He proposed that operative intelligence is responsible for the representation and manipulation of the dynamic or transformational aspects of reality, and that figurative intelligence is responsible for the representation of the static aspects of reality.


text: "Operative intelligence" is the active aspect of intelligence. It involves all actions, overt or covert, undertaken in order to follow, recover, or anticipate the transformations of the objects or persons of interest. "Figurative intelligence" is the more or less static aspect of intelligence, involving all means of representation used to retain in mind the states (i.e., successive forms, shapes, or locations) that intervene between transformations. That is, it involves perception, imitation, mental imagery, drawing, and language. Therefore, the figurative aspects of intelligence derive their meaning from the operative aspects of intelligence, because states cannot exist independently of the transformations that interconnect them. Piaget stated that the figurative or the representational aspects of intelligence are subservient to its operative and dynamic aspects, and therefore, that understanding essentially derives from the operative aspect of intelligence.


text: At any time, operative intelligence frames how the world is understood and it changes if understanding is not successful. Piaget stated that this process of understanding and change involves two basic functions: "assimilation" and "accommodation".


text: Through his study of the field of education, Piaget focused on two processes, which he named assimilation and accommodation. To Piaget, assimilation meant integrating external elements into structures of lives or environments, or those we could have through experience. "Assimilation" is how humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of fitting new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas. Assimilation in which new experiences are reinterpreted to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas and analyzing new facts accordingly. It occurs when humans are faced with new or unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it. In contrast, "accommodation" is the process of taking new information in one's environment and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information. This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation. Accommodation is imperative because it is how people will continue to interpret new concepts, schemas, frameworks, and more. Piaget believed that the human brain has been programmed through evolution to bring equilibrium, which is what he believed ultimately influences structures by the internal and external processes through assimilation and accommodation.


text: Piaget's understanding was that assimilation and accommodation cannot exist without the other. They are two sides of a coin. To assimilate an object into an existing mental schema, one first needs to take into account or accommodate to the particularities of this object to a certain extent. For instance, to recognize (assimilate) an apple as an apple, one must first focus (accommodate) on the contour of this object. To do this, one needs to roughly recognize the size of the object. Development increases the balance, or equilibration, between these two functions. When in balance with each other, assimilation and accommodation generate mental schemas of the operative intelligence. When one function dominates over the other, they generate representations which belong to figurative intelligence.


text: In his theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget proposed that humans progress through four developmental stages: the "sensorimotor" stage, "preoperational" stage, "concrete operational" stage, and "formal operational" stage.


text: The first of these, the sensorimotor stage "extends from birth to the acquisition of language". In this stage, infants progressively construct knowledge and understanding of the world by coordinating experiences (such as vision and hearing) from physical interactions with objects (such as grasping, sucking, and stepping). Infants gain knowledge of the world from the physical actions they perform within it. They progress from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage.


text: Children learn that they are separate from the environment. They can think about aspects of the environment, even though these may be outside the reach of the child's senses. In this stage, according to Piaget, the development of "object permanence" is one of the most important accomplishments. Object permanence is a child's understanding that an object continues to exist even though they cannot see or hear it. Peek-a-boo is a game in which children who have yet to fully develop object permanence respond to sudden hiding and revealing of a face. By the end of the sensorimotor period, children develop a permanent sense of self and object and will quickly lose interest in Peek-a-boo.


text: By observing sequences of play, Piaget was able to demonstrate the second stage of his theory, the pre-operational stage. He said that this stage starts towards the end of the second year. It starts when the child begins to learn to speak and lasts up until the age of seven. During the pre-operational stage of cognitive development, Piaget noted that children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information. Children's increase in playing and pretending takes place in this stage. However, the child still has trouble seeing things from different points of view. The children's play is mainly categorized by symbolic play and manipulating symbols. Such play is demonstrated by the idea of checkers being snacks, pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a table. Their observations of symbols exemplifies the idea of play with the absence of the actual objects involved.


text: The pre-operational stage is sparse and logically inadequate in regard to mental operations. The child is able to form stable concepts as well as magical beliefs (magical thinking). The child, however, is still not able to perform operations, which are tasks that the child can do mentally, rather than physically. Thinking in this stage is still egocentric, meaning the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of others. The Pre-operational Stage is split into "two" substages: the symbolic function substage, and the intuitive thought substage. The symbolic function substage is when children are able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object in front of them. The intuitive thought substage is when children tend to propose the questions of "why?" and "how come?" This stage is when children want to understand everything.


text: At about two to four years of age, children cannot yet manipulate and transform information in a logical way. However, they now can think in images and symbols. Other examples of mental abilities are language and pretend play. Symbolic play is when children develop imaginary friends or role-play with friends. Children's play becomes more social and they assign roles to each other. Some examples of symbolic play include playing house, or having a tea party. The type of symbolic play in which children engage is connected with their level of creativity and ability to connect with others. Additionally, the quality of their symbolic play can have consequences on their later development. For example, young children whose symbolic play is of a violent nature tend to exhibit less prosocial behavior and are more likely to display antisocial tendencies in later years.


text: Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person. Children tend to stick to their own viewpoint, rather than consider the view of others. Indeed, they are not even aware that such a concept as "different viewpoints" exists. Egocentrism can be seen in an experiment performed by Piaget and Swiss developmental psychologist Bärbel Inhelder, known as the three mountain problem. In this experiment, three views of a mountain are shown to the child, who is asked what a traveling doll would see at the various angles. The child will consistently describe what they can see from the position from which they are seated, regardless of the angle from which they are asked to take the doll's perspective. Egocentrism would also cause a child to believe, "I like "Sesame Street", so Daddy must like "Sesame Street", too."


text: Similar to preoperational children's egocentric thinking is their structuring of a cause and effect relationships. Piaget coined the term "precausal thinking" to describe the way in which preoperational children use their own existing ideas or views, like in egocentrism, to explain cause-and-effect relationships. Three main concepts of causality as displayed by children in the preoperational stage include: animism, artificialism and transductive reasoning.


text: Animism is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities. An example could be a child believing that the sidewalk was mad and made them fall down, or that the stars twinkle in the sky because they are happy. Artificialism refers to the belief that environmental characteristics can be attributed to human actions or interventions. For example, a child might say that it is windy outside because someone is blowing very hard, or the clouds are white because someone painted them that color. Finally, precausal thinking is categorized by transductive reasoning. Transductive reasoning is when a child fails to understand the true relationships between cause and effect. Unlike deductive or inductive reasoning (general to specific, or specific to general), transductive reasoning refers to when a child reasons from specific to specific, drawing a relationship between two separate events that are otherwise unrelated. For example, if a child hears the dog bark and then a balloon popped, the child would conclude that because the dog barked, the balloon popped.


text: A main feature of the pre-operational stage of development is primitive reasoning. Between the ages of four and seven, reasoning changes from symbolic thought to intuitive thought. This stage is "marked by greater dependence on intuitive thinking rather than just perception." Children begin to have more automatic thoughts that don’t require evidence. During this stage there is a heightened sense of curiosity and need to understand how and why things work. Piaget named this substage "intuitive thought" because they are starting to develop more logical thought but cannot explain their reasoning. Thought during this stage is still immature and cognitive errors occur. Children in this stage depend on their own subjective perception of the object or event. This stage is characterized by centration, conservation, irreversibility, class inclusion, and transitive inference.


text: Centration is the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic or dimension of a situation, whilst disregarding all others. Conservation is the awareness that altering a substance's appearance does not change its basic properties. Children at this stage are unaware of conservation and exhibit centration. Both centration and conservation can be more easily understood once familiarized with Piaget's most famous experimental task.


text: In this task, a child is presented with two identical beakers containing the same amount of liquid. The child usually notes that the beakers do contain the same amount of liquid. When one of the beakers is poured into a taller and thinner container, children who are younger than seven or eight years old typically say that the two beakers no longer contain the same amount of liquid, and that the taller container holds the larger quantity (centration), without taking into consideration the fact that both beakers were previously noted to contain the same amount of liquid. Due to superficial changes, the child was unable to comprehend that the properties of the substances continued to remain the same (conservation).


text: Irreversibility is a concept developed in this stage which is closely related to the ideas of centration and conservation. Irreversibility refers to when children are unable to mentally reverse a sequence of events. In the same beaker situation, the child does not realize that, if the sequence of events was reversed and the water from the tall beaker was poured back into its original beaker, then the same amount of water would exist. Another example of children's reliance on visual representations is their misunderstanding of "less than" or "more than". When two rows containing equal numbers of blocks are placed in front of a child, one row spread farther apart than the other, the child will think that the row spread farther contains more blocks.


text: Class inclusion refers to a kind of conceptual thinking that children in the preoperational stage cannot yet grasp. Children's inability to focus on two aspects of a situation at once inhibits them from understanding the principle that one category or class can contain several different subcategories or classes. For example, a four-year-old girl may be shown a picture of eight dogs and three cats. The girl knows what cats and dogs are, and she is aware that they are both animals. However, when asked, "Are there more dogs or animals?" she is likely to answer "more dogs". This is due to her difficulty focusing on the two subclasses and the larger class all at the same time. She may have been able to view the dogs as dogs "or" animals, but struggled when trying to classify them as both, simultaneously. Similar to this is concept relating to intuitive thought, known as "transitive inference".


text: Transitive inference is using previous knowledge to determine the missing piece, using basic logic. Children in the preoperational stage lack this logic. An example of transitive inference would be when a child is presented with the information "A" is greater than "B" and "B" is greater than "C". This child may have difficulty here understanding that "A" is also greater than "C".


text: The concrete operational stage is the third stage of Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage, which follows the preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 (middle childhood and preadolescence) years, and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. During this stage, a child's thought processes become more mature and "adult like". They start solving problems in a more logical fashion. Abstract, hypothetical thinking is not yet developed in the child, and children can only solve problems that apply to concrete events or objects. At this stage, the children undergo a transition where the child learns rules such as conservation. Piaget determined that children are able to incorporate inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from observations in order to make a generalization. In contrast, children struggle with deductive reasoning, which involves using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event. Children in this stage commonly experience difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads. For example, a child will understand that "A is more than B" and "B is more than C". However, when asked "is A more than C?", the child might not be able to logically figure the question out mentally.


text: Two other important processes in the concrete operational stage are logic and the elimination of egocentrism.


text: Egocentrism is the inability to consider or understand a perspective other than one's own. It is the phase where the thought and morality of the child is completely self focused. During this stage, the child acquires the ability to view things from another individual's perspective, even if they think that perspective is incorrect. For instance, show a child a comic in which Jane puts a doll under a box, leaves the room, and then Melissa moves the doll to a drawer, and Jane comes back. A child in the concrete operations stage will say that Jane will still think it's under the box even though the child knows it is in the drawer. (See also False-belief task.)


text: Children in this stage can; however, only solve problems that apply to actual (concrete) objects or events, and not abstract concepts or hypothetical tasks. Understanding and knowing how to use full common sense has not yet been completely adapted.


text: Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were able to incorporate inductive logic. On the other hand, children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a general principle to predict the outcome of a specific event. This includes mental reversibility. An example of this is being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories. For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal, and draw conclusions from the information available, as well as apply all these processes to hypothetical situations.


text: The abstract quality of the adolescent's thought at the formal operational level is evident in the adolescent's verbal problem solving ability. The logical quality of the adolescent's thought is when children are more likely to solve problems in a trial-and-error fashion. Adolescents begin to think more as a scientist thinks, devising plans to solve problems and systematically test opinions. They use hypothetical-deductive reasoning, which means that they develop hypotheses or best guesses, and systematically deduce, or conclude, which is the best path to follow in solving the problem. During this stage the adolescent is able to understand love, logical proofs and values. During this stage the young person begins to entertain possibilities for the future and is fascinated with what they can be.


text: Adolescents also are changing cognitively by the way that they think about social matters. One thing that brings about a change is egocentrism. This happens by heightening self-consciousness and giving adolescents an idea of who they are through their personal uniqueness and invincibility. Adolescent egocentrism can be dissected into two types of social thinking: imaginary audience and personal fable. Imaginary audience consists of an adolescent believing that others are watching them and the things they do. Personal fable is not the same thing as imaginary audience but is often confused with imaginary audience. Personal fable consists of believing that you are exceptional in some way. These types of social thinking begin in the concrete stage but carry on to the formal operational stage of development.


text: Piagetian tests are well known and practiced to test for concrete operations. The most prevalent tests are those for conservation. There are some important aspects that the experimenter must take into account when performing experiments with these children.


text: One example of an experiment for testing conservation is the water level task. An experimenter will have two glasses that are the same size, fill them to the same level with liquid, and make sure the child understands that both of the glasses have the same amount of water in them. Then, the experimenter will pour the liquid from one of the small glasses into a tall, thin glass. The experimenter will then ask the child if the taller glass has more liquid, less liquid, or the same amount of liquid. The child will then give his answer. There are three keys for the experimenter to keep in mind with this experiment. These are justification, number of times asking, and word choice.


text: These new cognitive skills increase the child's understanding of the physical world. However, according to Piaget, they still cannot think in abstract ways. Additionally, they do not think in systematic scientific ways. For example, most children under age twelve would not be able to come up with the variables that influence the period that a pendulum takes to complete its arc. Even if they were given weights they could attach to strings in order to do this experiment, they would not be able to draw a clear conclusion.


text: The final stage is known as the formal operational stage (early to middle adolescence, beginning at age 11 and finalizing around 14-15): Intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts. This form of thought includes "assumptions that have no necessary relation to reality." At this point, the person is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. During this time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts.


text: Piaget stated that "hypothetico-deductive reasoning" becomes important during the formal operational stage. This type of thinking involves hypothetical "what-if" situations that are not always rooted in reality, i.e. counterfactual thinking. It is often required in science and mathematics.


text: Children in primary school years mostly use inductive reasoning, but adolescents start to use deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is when children draw general conclusions from personal experiences and specific facts. Adolescents learn how to use deductive reasoning by applying logic to create specific conclusions from abstract concepts. This capability results from their capacity to think hypothetically.


text: "However, research has shown that not all persons in all cultures reach formal operations, and most people do not use formal operations in all aspects of their lives".


text: In one of the experiments, Piaget evaluated the cognitive capabilities of children of different ages through the use of a scale and varying weights. The task was to balance the scale by hooking weights on the ends of the scale. To successfully complete the task, the children must use formal operational thought to realize that the distance of the weights from the center and the heaviness of the weights both affected the balance. A heavier weight has to be placed closer to the center of the scale, and a lighter weight has to be placed farther from the center, so that the two weights balance each other. While 3- to 5- year olds could not at all comprehend the concept of balancing, children by the age of 7 could balance the scale by placing the same weights on both ends, but they failed to realize the importance of the location. By age 10, children could think about location but failed to use logic and instead used trial-and-error. Finally, by age 13 and 14, in early adolescence, some children more clearly understood the relationship between weight and distance and could successfully implement their hypothesis.


text: Piaget sees children's conception of causation as a march from "primitive" conceptions of cause to those of a more scientific, rigorous, and mechanical nature. These primitive concepts are characterized as supernatural, with a decidedly non-natural or non-mechanical tone. Piaget has as his most basic assumption that babies are phenomenists. That is, their knowledge "consists of assimilating things to schemas" from their own action such that they appear, from the child's point of view, "to have qualities which, in fact, stem from the organism". Consequently, these "subjective conceptions," so prevalent during Piaget's first stage of development, are dashed upon discovering deeper empirical truths.


text: Piaget gives the example of a child believing that the moon and stars follow him on a night walk. Upon learning that such is the case for his friends, he must separate his self from the object, resulting in a theory that the moon is immobile, or moves independently of other agents.


text: The second stage, from around three to eight years of age, is characterized by a mix of this type of magical, animistic, or "non-natural" conceptions of causation and mechanical or "naturalistic" causation. This conjunction of natural and non-natural causal explanations supposedly stems from experience itself, though Piaget does not make much of an attempt to describe the nature of the differences in conception. In his interviews with children, he asked questions specifically about natural phenomena, such as: "What makes clouds move?", "What makes the stars move?", "Why do rivers flow?" The nature of all the answers given, Piaget says, are such that these objects must perform their actions to "fulfill their obligations towards men". He calls this "moral explanation".


text: In 1967, Piaget considered the possibility of RNA molecules as likely embodiments of his still-abstract schemas (which he promoted as units of action)—though he did not come to any firm conclusion. At that time, due to work such as that of Swedish biochemist Holger Hydén, RNA concentrations had, indeed, been shown to correlate with learning.


text: Parents can use Piaget's theory in many ways to support their child's growth. Teachers can also use Piaget's theory to help their students. For example, recent studies have shown that children in the same grade and of the same age perform differently on tasks measuring basic addition and subtraction accuracy. Children in the preoperational and concrete operational levels of cognitive development perform arithmetic operations (such as addition and subtraction) with similar accuracy; however, children in the concrete operational level have been able to perform both addition problems and subtraction problems with overall greater precision. Teachers can use Piaget's theory to see where each child in their class stands with each subject by discussing the syllabus with their students and the students’ parents.


text: The stage of cognitive growth of a person differ from another. Cognitive development or thinking is an active process from the beginning to the end of life. Intellectual advancement happens because people at every age and developmental period look for cognitive equilibrium. To achieve this balance, the easiest way is to understand the new experiences through the lens of the preexisting ideas. Infants learn that new objects can be grabbed in the same way of familiar objects, and adults explain the day's headlines as evidence for their existing worldview.


text: However, the application of standardized Piagetian theory and procedures in different societies established widely varying results that lead some to speculate not only that some cultures produce more cognitive development than others but that without specific kinds of cultural experience, but also formal schooling, development might cease at certain level, such as concrete operational level. A procedure was done following methods developed in Geneva (i.e. water level task). Participants were presented with two beakers of equal circumference and height, filled with equal amounts of water. The water from one beaker was transferred into another with taller and smaller circumference. The children and young adults from non-literate societies of a given age were more likely to think that the taller, thinner beaker had more water in it. On the other hand, an experiment on the effects of modifying testing procedures to match local cultural produced a different pattern of results. In the revised procedures, the participants explained in their own language and indicated that while the water was now "more", the quantity was the same. Piaget's water level task has also been applied to the elderly by Formann and results showed an age-associated non-linear decline of performance.


text: Researchers have linked Piaget's theory to Cattell and Horn's theory of fluid and crystallized abilities. Piaget's operative intelligence corresponds to the Cattell-Horn formulation of fluid ability in that both concern logical thinking and the "eduction of relations" (an expression Cattell used to refer to the inferring of relationships). Piaget's treatment of everyday learning corresponds to the Cattell-Horn formulation of crystallized ability in that both reflect the impress of experience. Piaget's operativity is considered to be prior to, and ultimately provides the foundation for, everyday learning, much like fluid ability's relation to crystallized intelligence.


text: Piaget's theory also aligns with another psychometric theory, namely the psychometric theory of "g", general intelligence. Piaget designed a number of tasks to assess hypotheses arising from his theory. The tasks were not intended to measure individual differences and they have no equivalent in psychometric intelligence tests. Notwithstanding the different research traditions in which psychometric tests and Piagetian tasks were developed, the correlations between the two types of measures have been found to be consistently positive and generally moderate in magnitude. "g" is thought to underlie performance on the two types of tasks. It has been shown that it is possible to construct a battery consisting of Piagetian tasks that is as good a measure of "g" as standard IQ tests.


text: Piagetian accounts of development have been challenged on several grounds. First, as Piaget himself noted, development does not always progress in the smooth manner his theory seems to predict. "Décalage", or progressive forms of cognitive developmental progression in a specific domain, suggest that the stage model is, at best, a useful approximation. Furthermore, studies have found that children may be able to learn concepts and capability of complex reasoning that supposedly represented in more advanced stages with relative ease (Lourenço & Machado, 1996, p. 145). More broadly, Piaget's theory is "domain general," predicting that cognitive maturation occurs concurrently across different domains of knowledge (such as mathematics, logic, and understanding of physics or language). Piaget did not take into account variability in a child's performance notably how a child can differ in sophistication across several domains.


text: During the 1980s and 1990s, cognitive developmentalists were influenced by "neo-nativist" and evolutionary psychology ideas. These ideas de-emphasized domain general theories and emphasized domain specificity or modularity of mind. Modularity implies that different cognitive faculties may be largely independent of one another, and thus develop according to quite different timetables, which are "influenced by real world experiences". In this vein, some cognitive developmentalists argued that, rather than being domain general learners, children come equipped with domain specific theories, sometimes referred to as "core knowledge," which allows them to break into learning within that domain. For example, even young infants appear to be sensitive to some predictable regularities in the movement and interactions of objects (for example, an object cannot pass through another object), or in human behavior (for example, a hand repeatedly reaching for an object has that object, not just a particular path of motion), as it becomes the building block of which more elaborate knowledge is constructed.


text: Piaget's theory has been said to undervalue the influence that culture has on cognitive development. Piaget demonstrates that a child goes through several stages of cognitive development and come to conclusions on their own, however, a child's sociocultural environment plays an important part in their cognitive development. Social interaction teaches the child about the world and helps them develop through the cognitive stages, which Piaget neglected to consider.


text: More recent work from a newer dynamic systems approach has strongly challenged some of the basic presumptions of the "core knowledge" school that Piaget suggested. Dynamic systems approaches harken to modern neuroscientific research that was not available to Piaget when he was constructing his theory. This brought new light into research in psychology in which new techniques such as brain imaging provided new understanding to cognitive development. One important finding is that domain-specific knowledge is constructed as children develop and integrate knowledge. This enables the domain to improve the accuracy of the knowledge as well as organization of memories. However, this suggests more of a "smooth integration" of learning and development than either Piaget, or his neo-nativist critics, had envisioned. Additionally, some psychologists, such as Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner, thought differently from Piaget, suggesting that language was more important for cognition development than Piaget implied.


text: In recent years, several theorists attempted to address concerns with Piaget's theory by developing new theories and models that can accommodate evidence which violates Piagetian predictions and postulates.


The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. Its title refers to an observation by the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (created by Arthur Conan Doyle) in the 1892 short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze". Haddon and "The Curious Incident" won the Whitbread Book Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. Unusually, it was published simultaneously in separate editions for adults and children.


title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

text: The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who is described as "a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire. Although Christopher's condition is not stated, the book's blurb refers to Asperger syndrome (which today would be described as an autism spectrum disorder), high-functioning autism, or savant syndrome. In July 2009, Haddon wrote on his blog that ""The Curious Incident" is not a book about Asperger's...if anything it's a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way. The book is not specifically about any specific disorder", and that he, Haddon, is not an expert on the autism spectrum or Asperger syndrome.


text: The book uses prime numbers to number the chapters, rather than the conventional successive numbers. Originally written in English, it has been translated into 36 additional languages.


text: Christopher John Francis Boone is a 15-year-old boy with behavioral problems living in Swindon, England, with his widowed father, Ed. Christopher’s mother Judy was known to have passed away from a heart attack two years prior to the events of the story. One day, Christopher discovers that his neighbor Mrs. Shears’ dog Wellington has been fatally speared with a garden fork. As Christopher mourns over Wellington’s body, Mrs. Shears calls the police. When a policeman grabs Christopher’s arm, Christopher panics and hits him, resulting in him being arrested for assaulting a police officer, though he is quickly released with a police caution. He decides to investigate the dog's death, chronicling any information he receives in a book. During his investigation, he meets the elderly Mrs. Alexander, who informs Christopher that his mother had an affair with Mr. Shears.


text: Ed discovers the book and confiscates it. While searching Ed’s room for the book, Christopher finds letters from his mother dated after her supposed death, leading him to become distressed and enter a catatonic state. Realizing that Christopher has discovered the letters, Ed admits to lying about Judy's death; she is still alive and living in London with Mr. Shears. Ed also confesses that he had killed Wellington in anger after an argument with Mrs. Shears. Christopher decides to run away and live with his mother.


text: After a long, event-filled journey, evading policemen and feeling ill from the trains and crowds around him, he finally finds his way to the home of his mother and Mr. Shears, much to the delight of the former and chagrin of the latter. Soon after arriving, Christopher wants to return to Swindon in order to take his mathematics A-level. Judy leaves Mr. Shears as he becomes increasingly hostile towards both her and Christopher.


text: After an argument, Judy agrees to let Ed see Christopher for brief daily visits. Christopher remains apprehensive of Ed, hoping he will be imprisoned for killing Wellington. Ed gifts Christopher a puppy, promising that he will gradually rebuild trust with his son. Christopher declares that he will take further exams and attend university. He completes his mathematics A-level with top grades. The book ends with Christopher optimistic about his future.


text: In a 2003 interview, Haddon said In big I have to say honestly that I did more research about the London Underground and the inside of Swindon Railway Station, where some of the novel takes place, than I did about Asperger's syndrome. I gave [Christopher] kind of 9 or 10 rules that he would live his life by, and then I didn't read any more about Asperger's because I think there is no typical person who has Asperger's syndrome, and they're as large and diverse a group of people as any other group in society. And the important thing is that I did a lot of imagining, that I did a lot of putting myself into his shoes in trying to make him come alive as a human being rather than getting him right, whatever that might mean.


text: Haddon states on his website that, although he had read "a handful of newspaper and magazine articles about, or by, people with Asperger's and autism" in preparation for writing the book, he knows "very little" about Asperger's syndrome and that Christopher Boone is inspired by two different people. According to Haddon, none of these people can be labelled as having a disability. Haddon added that he "slightly regret[s]" that the term "Asperger's syndrome" appeared on the cover of his novel. In 2010, in an interview with "The Independent", he was described as now thoroughly irritated that the word Asperger's appeared on subsequent editions of the novel, because now everyone imagines that he is an expert and he keeps getting phone calls asking him to appear at lectures.


text: In a critical essay on the novel, Vivienne Muller quotes some praise by experts on disability theory: In its presentation of Christopher's everyday experiences of the society in which he lives, the narrative offers a rich canvas of experiences for an ethnographic study of this particular cognitive condition, and one which places a positive spin on the syndrome. The reader in this instance acts as ethnographer, invited to see what Mark Osteen claims is a 'quality in autistic lives that is valuable in and of itself'. Along similar lines, [Alex] McClimens writes that Haddon's novel is 'an ethnographic delight' and that 'Haddon's achievement is to have written a novel that turns on the central character's difference without making that difference a stigmatising characteristic. Muller adds that the novel works with a strong sense of the disabled speaking subject, drawing readers into Christopher's cognitive / corporeal space through an incremental layering of his perspectives and reactions ... The narrative also bristles with diagrams, maps, drawings, stories, texts that inform Christopher's lexicon for mapping meaning in a world of bewildering signs and sounds. She also admires such elements as the digressive stream-of-connectedness-and-disconnectedness way in which Christopher writes and thinks; the obsessive focus on minutiae; his musings about why animals behave the way they do; his quasi-philosophizing on death and life and the afterlife; his ambition to be an astronaut ...


text: In a survey of children's books which "teach about emotional life", Laura Jana wrote: On the one hand, this is a story of how an undeniably quirky teenage boy clings to order, deals with a family crisis, and tries to make sense of the world as he sees it. But it also provides profound insight into a disorder – autism – that leaves those who have it struggling to perceive even the most basic of human emotions. In so doing, "The Curious Incident" leaves its readers with a greater appreciation of their own ability to feel, express, and interpret emotions. This mainstream literary success made its way to the top of "The New York Times" bestseller list for fiction at the same time it was being touted by experts in Asperger's syndrome and autism-spectrum disorders as an unrivaled fictional depiction of the inner workings of an autistic teenage boy.


text: Christopher often comments on his inability to appreciate some metaphors. He gives as an example a quote that he found in "a proper novel": "I am veined with iron, with silver, and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus." Haddon told Terry Gross, "Funnily enough, it's actually a quote from Virginia Woolf. It's Virginia Woolf on an off day, in the middle, I think, of "The Waves". An author whom I love actually, but who sometimes got a little too carried away."


text: The novel is developed in various semiotic modes or resources: maps, diagrams, pictures, smileys, and the like, which are not ornamental but crucial to the understanding of the novel. This means that Haddon's novel can be conceived as multimodal.