Your experience sounds to me like modular mapping. I also tend to have abstracted, modular mental maps. They are modular due to gaps in my knowledge or other pr

Your experience sounds to me like modular mapping. I also tend to have abstracted, modular mental maps. They are modular due to gaps in my knowledge or other practical reasons (compression?). I don't think this modularity says anything about ones propensity to plan or navigate in a detached, third-person perspective versus in a first-person perspective. Clearly, with a more abstract mental map, you cannot plan in purely geometric terms. But, that doesn't distinguish whether or not you think about your environment in a holistic, out-of-time, out-of-body perspective. I am sure this varies by person as well, but I think people in grid-oriented cities or in relatively flat, open terrain are more likely to navigate and plan in a concretely geometric way. You can reason about and infer paths on a 2D plane and benefit from having a good knowledge of relative cartesian positions for different locations. You don't need detailed knowledge of other routing constraints when the paths are more interchangeable. If limited by transportation modes, you might be biased towards a more hierarchical mental model. I.e. I know some areas abstractly by the highway, exit, and local neighborhood without a clear model for how (if at all) several such areas connect together via local roads. Users of public transit systems are likely to have similarly hierarchical knowledge of trains, buses, and transfer stations. Popular transit system maps are greatly simplified to show this abstract topology without the full spatial complexity of the real physical system. When faced with challenging topography and circuitous routes, I think a more abstract topological model is more common. I have a rough sense of position along a route in terms of percentage completion or relative ordering of landmarks. This includes some topological knowledge such as trail junctions, water crossings, or ridges and saddles along this same abstract route. I don't retain a detailed memory of every twist or switchback in a convoluted trail. I can plan to walk around a lake or the rim of a valley without detailed memory of the shoreline or cliff edges themselves. However, I do also have a pretty good sense of my real orientation, i.e. where is north, where is the sun, which way does the surface tilt, and which bearing would take me towards other places I know (if I could fly). I have used that to speculate and plan routes cross country without any visible trail or trail markers. But, I am not foolhardy, so I do consult maps as well!