Experience has structure. In this section, you'll be introduced to some of the amazing details of mental engineering. We begin with a deceptively simple idea: if we alter the structure of an experience, we alter the nature of the resulting experience. It's a bit like noticing that any building has a specific structure. Things like walls, doors and windows are put together in a particular arrangement to create a building. If we start moving those walls, doors and windows around, or begin changing what they are made of, we can drastically alter the building's appearance and functioning. Imagine, for example, what would happen if we moved all the exterior doors of a building to the third floor. It's one thing to think about the familiar components of a building, things like walls and windows. But what are the analogous components of experience? And how can we change them in such a way as to change our experience? Let's find out.

What's on top of your refrigerator right now? How do you present that information to yourself? If you're like many people, you might call up some kind of mental picture of your refrigerator... and look, in their mind's eye, to see what's on top. It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps, that's why we so often encode information in mental pictures. In addition to representing information in our visual system,, many of us also add a sound track using our auditory modality. In fact, many of us are incessantly talking to ourselves... some even answer (you know who you are!). We, in the U.S., seem to use the other sense modalities less often... even though we are fully capable of imagining a taste, a smell or the sensation of touch.