Verbal fluency test online: Word Fluency in 3 rounds

Type as many animals as you can in 60 seconds, then fruits, then words that begin with F. Your counts show how readily words come to mind while the clock runs.

Start the Word Fluency test

3 rounds of 60 seconds · about 3 min · typed answers

Your counts appear when the third round ends. Keep them with a free account.

F fox fig fast film fern fe
F: fox, fig, fast, film, fernRound 3 · 42 seconds left

How it works

A 15-second practice comes first, then 3 rounds of 60 seconds. About 3 minutes from the first screen to your result.

  1. 1 · Practice

    Colors for 15 seconds

    Type every color you can think of, with a comma or Enter after each one. The practice is not scored.

  2. 2 · Rounds 1 and 2

    Animals, then fruits

    60 seconds to list animals, then 60 more for fruits. The instructions accept any living creature and any edible fruit.

  3. 3 · Round 3

    Words that start with F

    A last 60 seconds for any word beginning with F. An entry that starts with another letter is flagged.

A 3-second countdown follows the practice, and the 3 rounds then run back to back with no pause between them. The timer turns red for the last 10 seconds, and Finish early takes you on to the next round once your ideas run out.

Entries may use the letters a to z, hyphens and apostrophes. Spelling is not marked, but an entry with a space or a digit is flagged, so polar bear is flagged while sea-lion is not.

Letter fluency grew out of 1960s studies of word fluency by Arthur Benton and colleagues and is part of the Controlled Oral Word Association test; F, A and S are its best-known letters. Animals is the most widely used category. This version keeps 1 letter and 2 categories, and you type instead of speaking.

What it measures

Each round asks you to search memory for words that fit a rule, against the clock, without repeating yourself. The kind of rule changes how you search.

Category rounds: animals and fruits

  • Semantic memory: what you know about a category and how that knowledge is organized.
  • Clustering: working through subgroups such as pets, birds or citrus fruits.
  • Switching to a fresh subgroup once the current one runs dry.

Letter round: F

  • Searching vocabulary by first letter, a route most people rarely take.
  • Choosing a strategy, such as working through fa, fe and fi, and staying with it.
  • Holding the rule in mind and passing over words that come up but begin with another letter.

In a study of 74 older adults, the number of words named in both kinds of fluency task tracked updating, the part of working memory that keeps a running list current, while vocabulary size predicted how soon the first word arrived (Shao and colleagues, 2014). The authors call both tasks hybrid measures: no single skill explains the count.

Most adults produce more animals in a minute than words for a single letter, because a category offers a ready-made set of meanings and a letter does not. A gap between your category and letter counts is common and is not a finding on its own.

A test, not a diagnosis.

A word count from one sitting can neither diagnose a condition nor rule one out.

What you get

Your counts are on screen the moment round 3 ends.

On the result screen

  • Your total: the different valid words you typed across the 3 rounds. A repeat or a flagged entry is not counted.
  • Your average per round, rounded to a whole number.
  • The words counted in each round, with repeats and flagged entries listed separately.
  • The time you used in each round and your full word list, with repeats set apart and flagged entries struck through.
  • A one-line summary based on your total, and a CSV file of every entry.

If you save it

  • Stored in your results with a free account and available on any device you sign in from.
  • Listed alongside your other tests, so your verbal result sits next to memory, speed and reasoning.
  • Followed by a suggestion for which test to take next.

How this version is scored

Each round keeps the text you typed, including a round the timer ends before you press Finish early. When the test ends, it splits that text into entries, checks the form of each one and counts the valid, different ones.

Entry
Whatever sits between commas, semicolons or line breaks; pressing Enter adds the comma for you. Entries are trimmed and lowercased, so Dog and dog are one word.
Flagged entry
An entry with anything besides the letters a to z, hyphens or apostrophes, such as a space or a digit. In round 3, an entry that does not begin with F is flagged as well. Flagged entries are struck through in your word list and are not counted.
Repeat
A valid entry typed again in the same round is a repeat. The first one counts, and the repeat is shown separately and adds nothing to your total. A word you use in 2 rounds, such as fig for fruits and again for F, counts in both.
Total and average
total = different valid words in round 1 + round 2 + round 3 and average = total ÷ 3, rounded to a whole number.
Animals count
The different valid words from round 1, also saved as a figure of their own, because animal naming is the category with the most published norms.

Form, not meaning. The test does not look words up. A word from the wrong category, a proper name or a plural of a word you already typed (dog, dogs) is not caught. When an examiner scores the test, proper names, repeats and variants of one word such as eat and eating are left out, so your total can include entries an examiner would not count.

Typed, not spoken. In the clinic you say the words aloud and an examiner writes them down. Here you type them, so your typing speed and how easily you use the keyboard become part of the count.

Before you start

A quiet room, a familiar keyboard and a plan for each category give a count you can read with more confidence.

For a cleaner attempt

  • Type on the keyboard you use every day; a laptop or desktop is quickest for most people.
  • Silence notifications first, because the 3 rounds follow each other without a break.
  • Use the practice to get into the habit of a comma or Enter after every word.
  • Think in subgroups, such as pets, farm animals and sea creatures, and move on when one runs dry.

Interpret cautiously when

  • You type slowly, or only on a small phone keyboard.
  • English is not the language in which words come to you most easily.
  • Fatigue, illness, stress or interruptions got in the way.
  • You took the test recently and still remember your words from last time.

Questions

What does a verbal fluency test measure?

It measures how quickly you can bring words to mind under a rule and a time limit. Category rounds such as animals lean on your store of word meanings, while letter rounds lean more on search strategy and executive control. In research, both counts also track working memory updating, so no single skill explains them.

What is a normal score on a verbal fluency test?

Published norms come from the spoken version, recorded by an examiner. In Tombaugh and colleagues' 1999 norms for cognitively intact adults aged 16 to 95, age explained more of the spread in animal naming than schooling did, while schooling mattered more for the FAS letters; adults aged 60 to 79 with 13 to 21 years of education, for example, averaged about 18 animals in a minute. A typed version in a browser is not directly comparable, so treat any published average as context rather than a cut-off. Your result screen shows your own counts, not a percentile.

Can I take the Word Fluency test on my phone?

Yes. It runs in a phone browser and you type on the on-screen keyboard. Typing on a phone is slower for many people, which can lower the counts, so compare attempts made on the same kind of device.

Is this the same as the FAS test?

Not quite. The FAS test asks for words beginning with F, A and S, a minute for each letter, and adds the 3 counts. This version uses only F, next to 2 category rounds, and you type instead of speaking, so FAS norms do not apply to your F count.

Sources

By Cristian Dominguez Rein-Loring, Creative Technology Lead · Updated October 13, 2026