After about 5 or 6 years of abusing an electric guitar, learning from tab, you tube tutorials, general messing round etc. what it feels like to me is that now can guess from a note I hear, roughly where that will appear on the fretboard, and how it was struck - picked, finger, palm muting, and so on. I can listen to a riff and if I can get the first note or chord, I can work from there as I know a bit about what "next" note or chord will or won't work. You start out with a very generalised idea of where the high and low notes are, but it takes time before you internalise that, and then later you begin to be able to relate the sound of another musician playing to how you might play the same. I'm still crap, though.