Chimp memory test

The test is named after a study in which a young chimpanzee, Ayumu, and 9 university students saw five numbers that vanished under white squares after a fifth of a second. A round counted only when all five were touched in order. The students, in one session with no practice, got about 38% of rounds right; Ayumu, after much practice, about 79%. Those shares are read from the study's chart by a later paper, which also found that two adults matched Ayumu after a few thousand rounds of practice^[1]. Here the numbers stay until your first click, which is easier, so the first view sets the share of your rounds of five that you got right beside those figures as a mark, never as a rank.

Your result itself, the most numbers you clicked right, has no published figure to stand beside, so How we measured this draws your earlier results as short ticks on a ruler. A count that rises over a few weeks tells you more than a single number.

In every round the numbers are placed on cells chosen at random, so no round looks like an earlier one. A round counts as right when you clicked every number in order, from one up to the last. Your result is the largest number of numbers in any round you clicked right. If you miss the first round three times, your result is zero, which is also a result.

A click that comes too soon after the numbers appear is not counted, because nobody could have read the numbers by then. Clicks that come from a script are left out and the result says so. If you reach the largest count the grid can hold, the result is marked so that you know your true count may be higher.

Nothing about your clicks leaves this browser: the result is saved here and never goes into a link. You can read about us to see who makes the site.

The task rewards remembering a layout in one glance, not counting. People who do well tend to see the numbers as a path or as clusters, and click along it, rather than learning each position one at a time.

• Chunking: remember the numbers in groups, such as 1 to 3 in the top corner, rather than one by one.
• A calm start: the numbers wait for you, so look for as long as you need before the first click.
• Screen: a larger grid on a bigger screen has more places for the numbers to hide.
• Rest: a tired mind loses the layout the moment it is hidden.

Spend your look on the order, not on the places: find number 1, then find where 2 is relative to it, and so on, so that the numbers make a chain. Click the first number only when the chain is clear in your head. Take the test on a few different days and watch your own ticks on the ruler rather than one count.