ABSTRACT
Language is an essential source for human beings to construct internal representations. When people are exposed to verbal descriptions of configurations of objects or spatial scenes, it is a common experience for them to create representations of the described entities and their spatial relations. Visual imagery is a privileged mode for expressing these relations, by reflecting the topology of the scene, and in some cases detailed metric aspects. Visual images may be used as inputs for spatial reasoning. For instance, they may be used for computing topological relations among objects or landmarks that have been left implicit in a text or a piece of discourse, or for performing some mental simulation on an imagined configuration, as in mental scanning (Denis & de Vega, 1993; Johnson-Laird, 1996). The cognitive processes involved in the creation and use of internal visuo-spatial representations from verbal descriptions formed the essence of Chapter 5 of the present volume.
