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 in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 53, 2016, p. 245–301). 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 right‐hand side. However, as an 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. As a test, we vary whether sentences are written in the active versus the passive voice. Results from five studies indicate that the 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 the 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.

中文翻译：

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什么是空间代理偏向的代理？务实的相关性如何促进动作的空间表达

（社交）动作的心理想象力已显示遵循从左到右的轨迹，主题主体与左位置相关联（空间社务偏见，suitner和maass在实验性社会心理学研究中的进展），53，2016，p。245–301）。例如，要求个人选择形象化句子“ Tom kicks George”的图片时，倾向于选择代理人Tom位于左侧而不是右侧的图像。但是，作为代理人的主题角色的替代方法，这些发现可能反映了实用主义意义上的心理表征。具体而言，实用主义的观点认为，单词顺序和句法功能是传达该元素对于句子很重要的战略手段。因此，在所述图片匹配任务中的定位实际上可能反映了代理人的实际相关性，而不是代理机构本身。作为测试，我们会改变句子是用主动语态还是被动语态写的。来自五项研究的结果表明，被动语态会导致将代理放置在图片的右侧而不是左侧。相反，举起手来的人位于图片的左侧。第六个实验表明，对于被动语音，该代理仍被认为比接收方更具代理能力，但被认为相关性较低。调查结果与拟议的务实相关性说明是一致的。讨论了对空间局偏见的影响以及一般而言对建立心理表征的影响。该代理仍然被认为比接收者更具代理能力，但被认为相关性较低。调查结果与拟议的务实相关性说明是一致的。讨论了对空间局偏见的影响以及一般而言对建立心理表征的影响。该代理仍然被认为比接收者更具代理能力，但被认为相关性较低。调查结果与拟议的务实相关性说明是一致的。讨论了对空间代理商偏差以及对建立总体心理表示的影响。