Sighted Memory

A mental representation of a physical environment developed through past visual experience, used by people who lose their sight later in life to navigate and understand spaces they previously knew visually. People with acquired vision loss often rely on sighted memory to recall what places, routes, and landmarks "looked like" before their sight deteriorated, using these mental images alongside non-visual cues to orient themselves. However, sighted memory must be rebuilt when entering new or changed environments, making relocation particularly challenging. This contrasts with the spatial cognition strategies of people who are congenitally blind, who develop mental maps through other sensory modalities from birth.