To me it seems like the difference between having a written description of something vs an image of it. I can describe to you a square, 10 centimetres on each side, drawn with black ink in the centre of a sheet of white A4 printer paper. I could also show you a photo of that square. In both cases the information is conveyed, but only one of them involved an image

When I’m navigating I basically always do it by landmarks and turns, which is probably not unusual. I can use relationships of “this street goes west until it meets that street” without having to picture a map. The shape and length of that street don’t really matter for the sake of getting somewhere, only what it connects to