Chimp Test

The experiment this is named after

The test is a simplified version of a task used at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, where chimpanzees were trained to touch numerals in ascending order after the numerals were masked. A young chimpanzee named Ayumu became well known for performing it faster and more accurately than the human university students tested alongside him.

The comparison is not quite the humbling verdict it is usually presented as. The chimpanzees had extensive training on the task while the students generally did not, and the human ability to name and rehearse numbers is less of an advantage here than it is almost everywhere else.

What the result does suggest is a genuine difference in how a briefly seen layout is captured — something closer to holding a snapshot than to reading and remembering. That is the capacity this page is asking you for.

Where the difficulty actually is

Remembering the positions is only part of it. You also have to keep track of which number you are on while clicking, and the commonest way a round is lost is not forgetting where the seven is but clicking it before the six.

That divides attention in a way the memory tests on this site do not. The pattern has to survive being held while you act on it piece by piece, and each click is a small interruption to the thing you are trying not to lose.

It is why the numbers are worth locating in ascending order while they are still visible rather than trying to photograph the whole board. Deciding the route before the tiles hide it turns a memory problem into a much easier following-a-plan problem.

Two strikes, and starting from four

The run begins at four numbers, which nearly everyone clears, because starting at one would spend three rounds proving nothing. It ends after two failed rounds rather than one, so a single mis-click does not end an otherwise good attempt.

A failed round is retried at the same count rather than dropping back a level. Falling back would let a run oscillate indefinitely around a level and make the final score depend mostly on patience.

Numbers are placed at random each round with enough separation that adjacent tiles are not ambiguous to tap. On a phone the tiles stay large enough to hit reliably, since a test lost to a fat-finger error is measuring the screen rather than you.

This is a measurement toy, not a medical or psychological test. No score here says anything about your health, attention or cognition, and it is not a screening tool of any kind.

Questions

What is a good chimp test score?

Reaching the low teens is a solid result and the high teens is unusual. The chart shows where the bulk of attempts actually fall.

Are chimpanzees really better at this than humans?

Trained chimpanzees have outperformed untrained human students on the original laboratory version, which is a real finding but a less lopsided comparison than it is often made out to be, since only one side had practised the task.

Why does the test start at four numbers?

Because almost nobody fails one, two or three, so beginning lower would add rounds without adding information.