Chimp test

How the test works

The board shows numbers from 1 upwards, scattered on a grid of 40 places. Look as long as you want. As soon as you tap the 1, every other number turns into a blank disc, and you must tap them in order from memory.

You start with 4 numbers. Each complete board adds one number. A wrong tap shows the right order, costs one of your three errors and replays the same length with new positions. Your score is the length of the last board you completed.

Where the name comes from

In 2007, researchers at Kyoto University published a study of young chimpanzees working on a touch screen. One of them, Ayumu, could recall the position and order of five numerals shown for only 210 ms before being masked, with an accuracy of about 79%, a level none of the nine humans tested approached (Inoue and Matsuzawa, 2007, Silberberg and Kearns, 2009).

The online chimp test borrows the idea, numbers on a screen that hide after the first touch, but not the timing. Here you look as long as you like, which makes it a test of how many positions you can hold in order, not of a glimpse.

Average score and percentiles

Across 27,233 Human Benchmark games, the median score is 10 (Human Benchmark, 2026). The 10th percentile is 8 and the 90th is 13. A score of 12 already puts you ahead of most players.

These games come from motivated volunteers who chose to play, with no control for cheating, so the norm is a demanding opponent rather than a picture of the general population.

Can a human beat the chimpanzee?

Yes, with practice. In 2009 two researchers gave two people practice on the same brief task, and their accuracy matched Ayumu’s (Silberberg and Kearns, 2009). The chimpanzee had had many sessions of practice, the original human group had none. The details are in can a chimpanzee beat you at memory.

How reliable is it?

No study has published the reliability of this exact format. Its closest relatives do well. The computerized Corsi block task, another spatial span, reached 0.85 in young adults (Morawietz et al., 2024), and a mobile working memory test reached 0.88 over three weekly sessions (Van Patten et al., 2021). Until Headgame measures this game itself, it counts in the Memory stat with its public norm and the same caution as the others.

Questions

What is a good chimp test score?

10 is the median across 27,233 games, 13 is the 90th percentile (Human Benchmark, 2026). Beyond 15, you are in a small minority of players.

Do chimpanzees really have better memory than humans?

Not in general. One trained chimpanzee was faster on a very brief version of this task, and trained humans then matched him (Inoue and Matsuzawa, 2007, Silberberg and Kearns, 2009). It says something about practice and about one task, not about memory as a whole.

Sources

1. Human Benchmark, score distributions embedded in humanbenchmark.com, read on 13 October 2026. Reaction time n 70 940, sequence memory n 35 868, chimp test n 27 233, number memory n 24 084. humanbenchmark.com
2. Inoue S., Matsuzawa T. (2007). Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees. Current Biology 17(23), R1004 to R1005. doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.10.027
3. Silberberg A., Kearns D. (2009). Memory for the order of briefly presented numerals in humans as a function of practice. Animal Cognition 12, 405 to 407. doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0206-8
4. Morawietz C. et al. (2024). Consistency of spatial ability performance in children, adolescents, and young adults. Frontiers in Psychology 15, 1365941. PMC10938598. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1365941
5. Van Patten R., Iverson G.L., Muzeau M.A., VanRavenhorst-Bell H.A. (2021). Test-retest reliability and reliable change estimates for four mobile cognitive tests administered virtually in community-dwelling adults. Frontiers in Psychology 12, 734947. PMC8566921. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734947