Imagine that you need to draw a picture of an object or (if your artistic skills and inclinations are as poor as mine) that you need to look carefully at an object. How would you do this, and what properties of the object would influence the difficulty of your task? Generally speaking, the larger the object, the more time it would take to look over or to draw. Also, the more complicated the object-that is, the more different parts the object had-the harder it would be (and the longer it would take) to look at carefully or to draw. Apparently, the construction of visual images works the same way. Visual images are formed, not all at once, but in pieces that are assembled into a final condition (Finke, 1989).