mental representations

A mental representation is a mental structure that corresponds to an object, an idea or a collection of information. What sets experts a part from others is the quality and quantity of their mental representations. Chess grandmasters don’t develop some incredible memory for individual pieces on a chess board, they have context-specific mental representations that allow them to recognise patterns on a board and predict where the game might go. In essence, mental representations are patterns of information - facts, images, rules, relationships and so on.