What is agentic about the Spatial Agency Bias? How pragmatic relevance contributes to the spatial representations of actions

Abstract

The mental imagination of (social) actions has been shown to follow a left-to-right trajectory, with the thematic agent associated with the left position (Spatial Agency Bias, Suitner & Maass, 2016). For example, individuals asked to choose a picture that visualizes the sentence "Tom kicks George." tend to choose an image where the agent, Tom, is positioned on the left-hand side rather than on the righthand side. However, alternative to the thematic role of the agent, such findings may reflect a mental representation following pragmatic relevance. Specifically, a pragmatic perspective holds that word order and syntactic functions are strategic devices to communicate that the element is important for the sentence. Thus, positioning in the described picture-matching task may actually reflect the agent's pragmatic relevance instead of agency per se. For a test, we vary whether sentences are written in active versus passive voice. Results from five studies indicate that passive voice results in the tendency to place the agent on the right-hand side rather than on the left-hand side of a picture. Instead, the acted-upon person is positioned on the left-hand side of a picture. A sixth experiment reveals that for passive voice, the agent is still seen as more agentic than the receiver, but is considered less relevant. The findings are congruent with the proposed pragmatic relevance account. Implications for the Spatial Agency Bias as well as for building mental representations in general are discussed.

From Which Direction Does the Empire Strike (Back)?

“…In Study 1, the defending space ship was placed about 50:50 on the left and right-hand side of the pictures which means that in line with our hypothesis the original SAB effect was considerably reduced and even eliminated. But with a more abstract operationalization in which possible further influences (such as the spatial relevance bias, Halicki et al, 2021 ) were removed, Study 2 showed a clear reversal. Although the spatial representation directed to the left was much weaker and less unequivocal than that of attack as directed to the right, these results nevertheless suggest that the spatial representations of defense and attack are located in different positions.…”

“…Apparently defense is spatially represented differently than attack. This is remarkable insofar as a mere relevance bias ( Halicki et al, 2021 ) would not have predicted any differences between the attack and defense scenes. According to the relevance bias, the defending ship in the defense condition and the attacking space ship in attack scenes should have been placed on the left.…”

“…This more abstract task avoids having to place attacker and defender in the same picture which might have boosted the result of Study 1. It also circumvents a possible relevance bias ( Halicki et al, 2021 ), which may have hampered a placement on the right. This context-free paradigm allowed us to get more closely to the mental trajectory of the defense and attack actions.…”

“…Picture drawing (or selecting pictures) to illustrate a described action has been widely used in this domain ( Maass et al, 2014 ; Suitner et al, 2017 ). However, complicating things, recent research showed that the left position is also the place for the most relevant protagonist of the verbal description independent of whether this is the agent or not ( Halicki et al, 2021 ). Most often this is the grammatical subject.…”

Vertical vs. horizontal presentation formats result in different consumption choices due to construal priming

“…Objects in lower visual field appears closer Ooi et al (2001) Lower versus upper visual field; Distance perception Distant (vs. near) objects are more associated with upper (vs. lower) visual field Previc (1990) Horizon placement in the top versus bottom third of a panoramic image; Abstract versus concrete construal mindset Placement of the horizon in the top (vs. bottom) third of a panoramic image primes a stronger abstract (vs. concrete) mindset Halicki, Ingendahl, et al, (2021) and Halicki, Suitner, et al (2021) Left versus right brain hemisphere; Processing of stimuli Left (right) hemisphere of the brain associated with visual (verbal) processing Kimura, 1961Kimura, , 1966 Left versus right brain hemisphere;…”