Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet to understand how the mind works, one must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored) but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). But what does it mean for representations to be formatted? How many formats are there? Is it possible that the mind represents some pieces of information in multiple formats at once? To address these questions, I discuss a “case study” of representational format: the representation of spatial location. I review work (a) across species and across development, (b) across spatial scales, and (c) across levels of analysis (e.g., high-level cognitive format vs. low-level neural format). Along the way, I discuss the possibility that the same information may be organized in multiple formats simultaneously (e.g., that locations may be represented in both Cartesian and polar coordinates). Ultimately, I argue that seemingly “redundant” formats may support the flexible spatial behavior observed in humans and that researchers should approach the study of all mental representations with this possibility in mind.

心理表征是认知的本质。然而，要了解心智如何运作，不仅必须了解心理表征的内容（即存储的信息），还必须了解这些表征的格式（即信息的存储方式）。但是，格式化表示意味着什么？有多少种格式？大脑是否有可能同时以多种格式表示一些信息？为了解决这些问题，我讨论了表示格式的“案例研究”：空间位置的表示。我审查工作 (a) 跨物种和跨发展，(b) 跨空间尺度，和 (c) 跨分析层次（例如，高级认知格式与低级神经格式）。一路上，我讨论了相同信息可以同时以多种格式组织的可能性（例如，位置可以用笛卡尔坐标和极坐标表示）。最后，我认为看似“冗余”的格式可能支持在人类身上观察到的灵活空间行为，并且研究人员应该考虑到这种可能性来研究所有心理表征。