ABSTRACT
When asked “Where is the couch located in your living room?” many people would try to imagine the visual scene of the room (much like, in Chapter 8, identifying the shape of a cat’s ear). Alternatively, people might conjure up a schematic map of the living room, essentially drawing a mental sketch-map. Some people might use both of these types of images, or some hybrid of the two, to think about the space. The degree to which someone might use any one of these retrieval strategies probably depends on the familiarity of the environment (how recently you rearranged furniture), the scale of the space (can you see it all from a single vantage point?), specifi c experiences with the space (perhaps you used a schematic to decide where to place the furniture), and individual differences in preferences (e.g., Lawton, 1996; Pazzaglia & De Beni, 2001), but all of these are likely to have the feel of trying to see something about the environment (actual scenes or schematics).
