The average verbal memory score is about 42 words on Human Benchmark. See your percentile, why every word starts to feel seen, and how to score higher.
Published October 22, 2026
The average verbal memory score is about 42 words. That is the median of the 26,860 results Human Benchmark grades its verbal memory test against, and the most common result is 30 to 39 words, where 14% of players land. The HumanRank verbal memory test works the same way: one word at a time, you answer seen or new, and three mistakes end the run.
So if you get past 50 words, you beat most people. Past 100, you are in the top 10%.
Score 50 words or more and you beat 60% of players.
Take the verbal memory test
Percentiles from the 26,860 results Human Benchmark grades verbal memory scores against, read on October 22, 2026. Your score is the number of correct answers before your third mistake. 12% of runs end before 10 words, and only 1% reach 180.
In 1967, psychologist Roger Shepard showed people 540 words, one after another, then paired each with a new one. They picked the word they had seen 88% of the time. In 1973, Lionel Standing pushed the idea to 10,000 pictures, and people still recognized most of them. Recognition, knowing that you have met something before, is one of the strongest things human memory does.
So why do most runs end near 40 words? Because the test is a continuous recognition task, a design Shepard and Teghtsoonian introduced in 1961: old and new items are mixed in one stream, and every answer is a yes or no about familiarity. Two things work against you as the run grows.
And you only get three mistakes. Even at 95% accuracy, one wrong answer in twenty, the third mistake comes around the 60th word on average. That is why the scores bunch up between 20 and 60, while the number memory test measures a different limit: how much you can hold at once.
Then see where your run ranks on the verbal memory leaderboard. For another kind of memory, try the sequence memory test or the chimp test.
About 42 words, the median of 26,860 Human Benchmark results read on October 22, 2026. The most common result is 30 to 39 words, where 14% of players land.
50 words beats 60% of players, 70 words beats 78%, 100 words puts you in the top 9%, and 150 words in the top 2%.
Yes. A score of 100 is better than 91% of Human Benchmark results, so you are in the top 10% of players.
The test uses common words you already know, so they all feel somewhat familiar. As the run grows, each new word also competes with more old ones. Recognition memory is strong, but telling this run's familiarity apart from everyday familiarity gets harder with every word.
