National memory test results

The 29,500 people who recently completed the National Memory Test on the ABC Radio’s Science Show, all did extremely well, on average.

Australians are very good at recognising faces, remembering shopping lists and remembering information. Name recall isn’t as good as facial recognition, but the figures are high for remembering people’s occupations.

Those who rated their memory as ‘good’ tended to do better than the people who said their memory was only ‘okay’ or ‘bad’.
Average scores were:

• Shopping list recall (working memory) – 7 out of 10 items

• Facial recognition – 6 out of 6 faces

• Average name recall – 3 out of 5 names

• Average occupation recall – 4 out of 5 occupations

• Long term memory recall – 90% got it right

• Spot the difference – visual memory – 60% got it right

According to the National Memory Test, both genders got exactly the same score for each part of the memory test.

Age made no difference to performance – older participants were just as likely to do well as young kids. But the program admits they may not have involved older people with poor memories; they invited participation from people interested in keeping their mind healthy, one of the key factors in preventing dementia as you age.

There were only few minor differences in memory performance between the states.

People performed best who: watched less than an hour or TV a day; liked reading novels; consumed less than two alcoholic drinks a day; went to trivia nights; did crosswords; ate fish, and drank tea.