Sure As The Rest
Twelve lists of words, and one word missing from each of them: the word every item on the list points at. Later you will be asked whether you saw it. Most people say yes, and say it with the same confidence they bring to the words that were actually there.
Twelve lists of twelve words go past, one word at a time, for a second each. You do not have to do anything with them except read them. Then a short arithmetic break, then 84 words one at a time, and for each one you say whether it was on a list, and how sure you are.
Four times during the lists a word will flash in amber. Press the spacebar when it does. That is the only key you need until the test.
Everybody agrees memory is imperfect, and almost everybody pictures the imperfection the same way: a recording with gaps. Some of it was kept, some was lost, and the part you can still see clearly is the part that happened. That picture is not vague. It commits to something exact, which is that a word you never met is a new word, like any other new word, no matter what else was on the list.
Every list here is built out of the associates of one word, and that one word is left out. This page is going to ask you about it as though it had been there, and put a number on what you say.
- About eleven minutes: four of reading, one of arithmetic, four of deciding.
- Read every word. Do not write anything down, and do not rehearse a list once it ends.
- Stay on the tab. Words that run while it is in the background are counted and can void the session.
- There is no way to score well here. There is only a way to answer honestly.
- Everything is computed in your browser. Nothing is recorded, nothing is sent anywhere.