Internal World Models as Imagination Networks in Cognitive Agents

What is the computational objective of imagination? While classical interpretations suggest imagination is useful for maximizing rewards, recent findings challenge this view. In this study, we propose that imagination serves to access an internal world model (IWM) and use psychological network analysis to explore IWMs in humans and large language models (LLMs). Specifically, we assessed imagination vividness ratings using two questionnaires and constructed imagination networks from these reports. Imagination networks from human groups showed correlations between different centrality measures, including expected influence, strength, and closeness. However, imagination networks from LLMs showed a lack of clustering and lower correlations between centrality measures under different prompts and conversational memory conditions. Together, these results indicate a lack of similarity between IWMs in human and LLM agents. Overall, our study offers a novel method for comparing internally-generated representations in humans and AI, providing insights for developing human-like imagination in artificial intelligence.