My visualization of the man walking down the street included a number of irrelevant details: my view was from above eye level; the man was wearing a hat; he was walking towards me, but moving towards the right of me, not directly towards me; he was walking on the right side of the street (my right, his left), on a sidewalk; and he turned right (my right, his left) to go into the drugstore.
I believe my view from above was triggered by the word “down” in the description of the scenario, and the hat came from the word “old”—the generic man-in-hat is also what I usually imagine when I read Nero Wolfe novels, which are set in the ’30s through ’70s.
I’m not claiming that these details a strongly fixed—as soon as I consider alternatives to the specific details I related above, I get visualizations of those alternatives. I’m also not claiming that these visualizations are close to photographic in immediacy and sharpness—for me, they have about the same clarity as visual memories, which is to say, not much.
My visualization of the man walking down the street included a number of irrelevant details: my view was from above eye level; the man was wearing a hat; he was walking towards me, but moving towards the right of me, not directly towards me; he was walking on the right side of the street (my right, his left), on a sidewalk; and he turned right (my right, his left) to go into the drugstore.
I believe my view from above was triggered by the word “down” in the description of the scenario, and the hat came from the word “old”—the generic man-in-hat is also what I usually imagine when I read Nero Wolfe novels, which are set in the ’30s through ’70s.
I’m not claiming that these details a strongly fixed—as soon as I consider alternatives to the specific details I related above, I get visualizations of those alternatives. I’m also not claiming that these visualizations are close to photographic in immediacy and sharpness—for me, they have about the same clarity as visual memories, which is to say, not much.