How the verbal memory test works
A word appears. If it has not come up before in this run, choose New. If it has, choose Seen. Then the next word appears.
The first few answers are easy because almost everything is new. Then repeats start to mix in, and the list of words you need to keep in your head grows with every turn. Each mistake costs a life. You have three.
On a keyboard you can press S for Seen and N for New.
What is a good verbal memory score?
| Score | Rating |
|---|---|
| 120 or more | Exceptional |
| 70 to 119 | Strong |
| 45 to 69 | Above average |
| 25 to 44 | Average |
| 12 to 24 | Below average |
| Under 12 | Keep practicing |
Because one point is given per correct answer, your score is higher than the number of different words you memorized. The result screen tells you how many separate words you were tracking when the run ended.
Recognition, not recall
There are two main ways to test memory. Recall asks you to produce the answer from nothing, like writing down a shopping list from memory. Recognition shows you an item and asks whether you have seen it before. This test is the second kind, and psychologists call the format a continuous recognition task.
Recognition is easier than recall, which is why scores here can reach into the dozens while most people can only recall a list of about seven unrelated words. But it has its own trap. As the run continues, every word starts to feel faintly familiar, and you have to separate “I saw this two minutes ago” from “I know this word from everyday life”.
Why it gets harder over time
Early words are held in short-term memory and are easy to confirm. After 20 or 30 turns, they have been pushed out by newer ones and have to be pulled back from longer-term storage. Memory researchers call the crowding effect interference: new items make older items harder to retrieve, and the reverse is also true.
Similar words make things worse. If you saw “harbor” earlier, a new word like “anchor” can produce a feeling of recognition because the two are related in meaning. Mistakes of this kind are common and well documented in memory research.
How to score higher
Make a picture. When a new word appears, spend half a second imagining the thing itself. A lantern, lit, on a table. Images are far easier to recognize later than the bare sound of a word.
Link words together. Put each new word into a running scene or story with the previous ones. When a word returns, the scene comes back with it.
Say it once. Silently pronouncing the word adds a second memory trace alongside the visual one.
Do not rush. There is no time limit. The most common cause of a lost life is a quick answer on a word that only felt familiar.
Trust a clear memory, doubt a vague one. If you can remember the image you made, it is seen. If the word just feels sort of known, it is more often new.
Verbal memory in daily life
The same system is at work when you recognize a name you heard at the start of a meeting, know that you have already read a paragraph, or notice that a word in a foreign language has come up before. If you want to test memory for numbers instead of words, try the number memory test. For memory of positions, the sequence memory test is the closest match.