Can You Beat Ayumu?

Test Your Eidetic Memory

Who is Ayumu?

Ayumu is a chimpanzee living at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University.

Ayumu participated in a series of short-term memory tasks using a touch-sensitive computer screen. This app recreates one of those tasks. Ayumu's performance on this task was superior to that of comparably trained university students.

The ability that this app tests for is called 'eidetic memory' and is believed to occur in a small number of children and is quite rare in adults.

Perhaps you have this very rare ability. You can test yourself with this app.

How To Play

Ayumu attains level 10 of this game repeatedly and with ease (see videos below). We start you at level 3. That means that initially only 3 numbers are displayed on the screen. They are displayed briefly then covered up. Your challenge is to tap the white squares that covered them, uncovering the underlying numbers in correct numerical order. If you tap all 3 in order, your level increases to 4 which means on the next round you will be shown 4 numbers. And so on, up to level 10.

At any point you can request a new game by pressing . There is no penalty for doing so. So if you're distracted and didn't see the numbers before they were displayed, simply request a new set of numbers. Often you need to do this when the app first starts. You definitely need to do it after each game to request a new game.

Ayumu only needs to glance at the numbers for .25 seconds in order to remember them. The game is initially set to also just show the numbers for a quarter second. However if you would like to try longer intervals, tap the picture of the Chimpanzee in the upper right and select from the various options:

Note that for purposes of ranking only scores achieved at Ayumu's level (.25 seconds) will be considered.

Video of Ayumu at Work

If the above video is not playing, you can view it here.