Offline World Models as Imagination Networks in Cognitive Agents

The computational role of imagination remains debated. While classical accounts emphasize reward maximization, emerging evidence suggests it accesses internal world models (IWMs). We employ psychological network analysis to compare IWMs in humans and large language models (LLMs) via imagination vividness ratings, distinguishing offline world models (persistent memory structures accessed independent of immediate goals) from online models (task-specific representations). Analyzing 2,743 humans across three populations and six LLM variants, we find human imagination networks exhibit robust structural consistency, with high centrality correlations and aligned clustering. LLMs show minimal clustering and weak correlations with human networks, even with conversational memory, across environmental and sensory contexts. These differences highlight disparities in how biological and artificial systems organize internal representations. Our framework offers quantitative metrics for evaluating offline world models in cognitive agents.