How the verbal memory test works
Press Start test and the first word appears. For every word, decide:
- Seen if it has already appeared at least once in this round.
- New if this is the first time it shows up.
On a keyboard, 1 means Seen and 2 means New. A right answer flashes green and earns a point. A wrong answer flashes red, tells you whether the word was new or a repeat, and costs one of your 3 lives. When all 3 lives are gone the round ends, and your score is the number of correct answers. To see how many digits you can hold at once, try the number memory test.
The words come from a pool of more than 300 everyday words, mostly concrete nouns like animals, food and household objects, with a few adjectives. The English and Turkish versions of this page each use their own list. After the first few words, a little under half of what you see are repeats, and a repeated word is never shown twice in a row. There is no time limit for each word, so the only pressure is the growing list you have to keep in mind.
Your best score and your last results are saved in this browser only.
Why it gets harder the longer you play
At the start you only have to remember a handful of words. Fifty answers in, you may be keeping track of thirty or more, and some of them last appeared many words ago. The test is a version of what psychologists call a continuous recognition task. In 1961 Roger Shepard and M. Teghtsoonian presented long runs of three-digit numbers in exactly this "old or new?" format and found that the further back an item had appeared, the more often it was missed. The same thing happens to you here: recent repeats are easy, old ones slip.
Two kinds of mistakes are possible, and they feel different:
- Missing a repeat ("New" for a word you saw long ago) is forgetting.
- A false alarm ("Seen" for a truly new word) is usually familiarity playing tricks: an everyday word like table can feel familiar simply because you see it all the time. Common words make this test harder, not easier.
Recognition is easier than recall
Recognising a word is much easier than recalling it without a cue. Roger Shepard (1967) showed people several hundred words, sentences or pictures and then asked them to pick out the ones they had seen. Recognition was strikingly accurate, and even better for pictures than for words. Lionel Standing (1973) pushed this further, showing that people recognise a large share of as many as 10,000 pictures. This is one reason the best scores here come from people who turn each word into a quick mental image.
There is no published typical score for this exact game, so your result card shows how you compare with your own earlier rounds.
How to get a higher score
- Picture each word. Turn kettle into an image of a kettle. Images stick better than bare words.
- Make links. Connect a word to the one before it with a tiny story. A strange link is easier to remember than a plain one.
- Trust a clear "seen" feeling, question a vague one. Ask yourself where you saw the word. If you cannot place it, it may only feel familiar because it is common.
- Slow down. There is no timer per word. A one-second pause before answering costs nothing.
- Play rested. Sleep and attention matter more than any trick.
How this differs from clinical word-list tests
Clinical tests of verbal memory, such as word-list learning tasks, usually read a fixed list aloud several times and then ask the person to say back as many words as possible, sometimes again after a delay. That measures free recall and learning over trials. This game measures recognition within a single growing list. The two are related but not interchangeable. Reading a whole text is a different skill again; the reading speed test times it and checks what you understood. How many words you know in the first place is what the vocabulary test estimates.
Limits of an online test
This is a self-check for curiosity and practice, not a medical or psychological assessment. Scores vary from round to round, and which words happen to repeat plays a part, so judge yourself by your best of several rounds. If you notice real changes in your memory in daily life, talk to a doctor.
More memory games are on the memory and brain tests page.
Sources
- Shepard, R. N., & Teghtsoonian, M. (1961). Retention of information under conditions approaching a steady state. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(3), 302–309.
- Shepard, R. N. (1967). Recognition memory for words, sentences, and pictures. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6(1), 156–163.
- Standing, L. (1973). Learning 10,000 pictures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 25(2), 207–222.
Frequently asked questions
How does the verbal memory test work?
Words appear one at a time. Choose Seen if the word already appeared in this round and New if it is the first time. Each right answer is a point, and each wrong answer costs one of your 3 lives.
What counts as a good score?
There is no published average for this exact game, so the result card compares you with your own earlier rounds. Your score climbs as long as you can keep the growing list of words straight.
How often do words repeat?
After the first few words, a little under half of the words shown are repeats. A repeated word is never shown twice in a row, and there are more than 300 different words in the pool.
Is there a time limit?
No. You can take as long as you like for each word. The difficulty comes from the number of words you have to keep track of, not from speed.
Why do I sometimes think a new word is a repeat?
Common words feel familiar because you meet them every day, and that feeling can be mistaken for having seen them in this round. Asking yourself where you saw the word helps you tell the two apart.
Can I use the keyboard?
Yes. Press 1 for Seen and 2 for New.