Memory tests

Short-term, working and long-term memory

Long-term memory keeps what you learned last year. Short-term memory holds a handful of items for a few seconds. Working memory is short-term memory in use, holding a code while you type it, or a route while you follow it.

The classic way to measure it is the span, the longest list you can repeat. Joseph Jacobs measured digit span as early as 1887 (Jacobs, 1887). In 1956 George Miller described the limit of about seven items, plus or minus two (Miller, 1956). In a computerised study of 763 adults, the average forward digit span was 6.52 digits (Woods et al., 2011). The sequence memory test is a spatial span, a cousin of the Corsi block task (Kessels et al., 2000).

Looking for a dementia memory test?

This site is not one. These games measure performance on a task, not the health of your memory, and a low score on a phone in a noisy room means very little. If you or someone close to you is worried about memory, talk to a doctor, who can use validated clinical tests.

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. Jacobs J. (1887). Experiments on prehension. Mind 12(45), 75 to 79. doi.org/10.1093/mind/os-12.45.75
3. Miller G.A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two. Psychological Review 63(2), 81 to 97. doi.org/10.1037/h0043158
4. Woods D.L., Kishiyama M.M., Yund E.W. et al. (2011). Improving digit span assessment of short-term verbal memory. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 33(1), 101 to 111. PMC2978794. doi.org/10.1080/13803395.2010.493149
5. Kessels R.P.C., van Zandvoort M.J.E., Postma A. et al. (2000). The Corsi Block-Tapping Task, standardization and normative data. Applied Neuropsychology 7(4), 252 to 258. doi.org/10.1207/s15324826an0704_8