Twelve years, two opposite methods
Even in 1885 he checked his nonsense-syllable findings against meaningful material such as poems.7 He estimated that meaningful material took about a tenth of the effort to learn.5 The completion test used that advantage as the thing being measured.
A question from the schools
In Breslau, Ebbinghaus served on a commission that studied how children's mental ability declined over the school day. The details of how the commission measured it have been lost, but its results helped lay the groundwork for later intelligence testing.2
The completion test came out of that study of Breslau schoolchildren's mental capacities.3 Ebbinghaus kept working on it until 1905.6
Pick the word that makes sense
Tap a gap, then pick from three options. One of each set fits both the grammar and the meaning.
A passage written for this page, not one of Ebbinghaus's texts. In "Write" mode any word that fits the sense is accepted from a list of plausible answers, so an unusual but sensible answer may be marked wrong. There are no norms.
Berlin, Breslau, Halle
References
- [1]Hermann Ebbinghaus (biography). History of Statistics, University of York.york.ac.uk
- [2]Wikipedia contributors. Hermann Ebbinghaus (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [3]Hermann Ebbinghaus. Encyclopaedia Britannica.britannica.com
- [4]Roediger, H. L. (1985). Remembering Ebbinghaus. Contemporary Psychology (PDF).psychnet.wustl.edu
- [5]Wozniak, R. H. Introduction to Ebbinghaus, Memory (1885/1913). Classics in the History of Psychology.psychclassics.yorku.ca
- [6]Hermann Ebbinghaus. Psychology Encyclopedia, JRank.psychology.jrank.org
- [7]Murre, J. M. J., & Chessa, A. G. (2022). Why Ebbinghaus' savings method from 1885 is a very "pure" measure of memory performance. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. PubMed Central.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Related historical tests
Two years earlier, Binet and Henri argued that tests should target comprehension and memory for ideas, not the senses. The completion test is a German answer in the same direction.
Kraepelin studied mental fatigue with long runs of simple additions. The Breslau commission asked a similar question about school lessons, and a completion test was part of the answer.
The 1905 scale collected many short tasks graded by age, including several that depend on understanding language. It made the idea of testing higher processes in children workable at scale.
Cattell measured reaction time, touch and grip. Ebbinghaus's test asked children to use their understanding of a text instead.
Group tests of the Army era printed their items for whole rooms at once, with answers that could be scored quickly. The "Choose" mode above resembles that later multiple-choice form more than the 1897 original.