Top Chimp: Can You Do Better Than These Chimp Champs?

In 2008, a bright 7-year-old made headlines when he and 5 of his compatriots bested adult college students at a test of working memory. Sound impressive? Consider one additional fact: the 7-year-old Ayumu was a chimpanzee.

A study of Ayumu and other chimps from Kyoto University was published in the journal Current Biology in 2008. Though Ayumu was particularly good at the working memory task, assessments of a number of chimpanzee and human subjects led researchers to conclude that young chimpanzees have an extraordinary eidetic memory that surpasses that of human adults. Eidetic memory is a special type of working memory defined as “the memory capability to retain an accurate, detailed image of a complex scene or pattern” (Inoue and Matsuzawa, 2008). Interestingly enough, other studies have suggested that young humans also surpass adult humans in eidetic memory tasks—eidetic memory appears to diminish with age.

Ayumu’s display of remarkable cognitive performance made waves that spread from Kyoto University (where the chimp lives in a campus lab) all around the world. You can see a clip of Ayumu’s astonishing performance here.

While you can’t travel to Kyoto to challenge Ayumu one-on-one, Lumosity has made it easy to continue the interspecies challenge online. Our popular training game, Top Chimp, was inspired by Ayumu and other similar research projects.

Top Chimp pits you against a succession of chimp opponents. In each round, you’ll bet chips depending on how quickly and how well you think you can remember the order of numbers that flash on the screen—a task very similar to the one given to Ayumu. As you progress through Top Chimp, opponents become more difficult to beat. But practice leads to serious improvements—remember that Ayumu’s wins were at least partially attributable to the considerable time he spent practicing this working memory task. You, too, can make huge strides in visual attention and working memory by playing games such as Top Chimp on a regular basis!

Subscribe today to unlock access to Top Chimp and all 35+ Lumosity training games. The cognitive progress you make will be rewarded by truly satisfying wins.