[cjameskeller]

I think some of this comes down to the way the question is asked. If you asked me to imagine "a house", I would have a somewhat abstract, child-like template in mind. Some of that would be due to expectation -- that you probably will have me do something with respect to the _concept_ of a house, rather than asking details of it. If you asked me to picture, instead "a specific house, perhaps one on your street", then it would be a detailed image, and I could easily count the windows, give the colors of roof, siding, and trim, etc. But I suppose thinking about it now, I couldn't even in that case provide you with the number of rows of siding on the house. It's something I would imagine one could do with practice, but the brain seems to naturally drop some level of detail when recalling or imagining an object.