Why a chimp beats you at this
In 2007 Kyoto University tested young chimpanzees against university students on exactly this task. Ayumu, a chimp raised at the Primate Research Institute, kept the layout of nine numerals after a flash of about 210 milliseconds — far too short to read them one by one — and beat the human group.
The usual explanation is that people trade this kind of instant snapshot memory for language: an adult reads the numbers, and reading is a sequence, which takes time the flash does not give. A young chimp takes the whole board at once, the way a photograph does.
Where the machine stands
- For a computer this test has no difficulty at all: the layout is already stored, and exposure time means nothing to it.
- Human short-term memory holds roughly 4 to 7 items at once — the limit this test is walking you up to.
- Practice moves the number, but not the mechanism: trained players chunk the board into shapes instead of remembering separate digits.