What Is the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test?

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) is a classic list-learning memory test. An examiner reads the same list of 15 unrelated words aloud five times, and after each reading the person being tested repeats back every word they can remember. A second word list follows as interference, then a surprise recall of the original list, another recall after a delay of roughly 20 to 30 minutes, and finally a recognition task. From this simple procedure, a trained examiner can chart how quickly a person learns new verbal information, how well they hold onto it, and how easily that learning is disrupted. The sections below cover the test's history and scoring, along with who is likely to encounter it in a real evaluation.

The test is older than its name suggests. According to a historical account summarized in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, the Swiss psychologist Édouard Claparède developed the "Test de mémoire des mots" (Test of Memory for Words) in the late 19th century as a single free-recall trial of 15 words. His student André Rey, the Swiss psychologist who also created the well-known Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure, systematized Claparède's word list into a repeated-trials learning test. Researchers conventionally cite the RAVLT to Rey's mid-century clinical examination manual, L'examen clinique en psychologie, and to a 1959 English-language adaptation by Edith Taylor.

A small piece of trivia from that same account: a few of the original French words changed in translation. "Belt" became "bell," "sun" became "moon," and "moustache" became "nose," which is why the modern English list contains its slightly odd mix of items.

The standard paradigm has changed little in over half a century. The Mayo Clinic normative studies describe it this way: the examiner reads a list of 15 semantically unrelated words (List A) and asks for immediate recall, repeating this cycle five times. A new 15-word list (List B) is then presented once, and the person recalls as many List B words as possible. Immediately afterward, the examiner asks for List A again, without reading it. After a delay, about 30 minutes in the common North American procedure and 20 minutes in some validated versions, the person recalls List A one more time. A recognition trial usually follows, in which a longer list containing the 15 targets and 15 unstudied "foils" is presented and the person identifies which words were on the original list.

The active portions of the test are brief, and the delay is typically filled with other, nonverbal tasks so the person cannot rehearse. The word lists are short enough that nobody is expected to get everything right on the first pass. A typical healthy adult recalls only some of the list on Trial 1 and climbs steadily from there, and that climb is exactly what the test is designed to measure.

The RAVLT produces an unusually rich set of scores for such a simple task. The publisher of one widely used handbook, Western Psychological Services, notes that the test is used to evaluate verbal learning and memory, including "proactive inhibition," "retroactive inhibition," retention, and encoding versus retrieval. In practice, examiners look at several patterns.

• The learning curve: the trial-by-trial rise from Trial 1 to Trial 5 shows how much a person gains from repetition. A flat curve suggests a genuine learning problem rather than a momentary lapse in attention.

• Total learning: the sum of words recalled across Trials 1 through 5 serves as an overall index of verbal learning and is one of the primary scores in modern normative studies.

• Proactive interference: if List B recall is much weaker than Trial 1 of List A, earlier learning may be crowding out new learning, a pattern called proactive interference.

• Retroactive interference: if recall of List A drops sharply right after the List B distraction, the new material has disrupted the old, which is retroactive interference.

• Retention: comparing delayed recall with Trial 5 shows how much information survives the delay. Researchers often express this as a forgetting rate, the percentage of learned words lost over the interval.

• Recognition versus recall: someone who cannot freely recall words but picks them out accurately on the recognition trial likely has a retrieval problem rather than a storage problem. The Mayo group cautions that a sizable recognition benefit is common in normal aging and does not by itself indicate pathology.

Examiners also track errors such as "intrusions" (words that were never on the list) and repetitions, and researchers have studied subtler patterns. Reduced recall of words from the beginning of the list, for example, has been reported in Alzheimer's disease and appears to predict which patients with mild cognitive impairment will progress to dementia.

The RAVLT almost always appears inside a larger battery during neuropsychological testing, often alongside brief screens such as the clock drawing test. Common referral reasons include memory complaints in older adults, suspected mild cognitive impairment or dementia, traumatic brain injury, and epilepsy. Research published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience notes that the test has been standardized and validated in many languages and clinical populations and is helpful in predicting which patients with mild cognitive impairment will progress to dementia.

Epilepsy programs rely on it for a specific reason. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke selected the RAVLT as a "Common Data Element" for verbal memory in funded epilepsy studies because it proved more sensitive than the California Verbal Learning Test to the memory impairment associated with seizures arising in the left temporal lobe. The leading explanation is that the RAVLT's words are semantically unrelated, so patients cannot lean on category clues to compensate.

Interpretation depends heavily on demographics. In the Mayo Normative Studies, based on 4,428 cognitively unimpaired adults aged 30 to 91, age explained roughly 17 to 26 percent of the variance in recall scores, women consistently outperformed men, and education mattered mainly for immediate recall rather than retention. Good norms therefore adjust for age, sex, and education before labeling a score low. Repeat testing matters too: research on list-learning tests has found that scores improve somewhat across sessions even when different word lists are used, which is why alternate forms exist and why examiners interpret retest gains cautiously. The video above digs into the same issue for IQ scores.

The RAVLT inspired a family of successors, the best known being the California Verbal Learning Test. The CVLT uses semantically related words, which lets examiners study how people organize material by category; as noted above, that same feature can mask deficits the RAVLT exposes. According to Pearson, the current CVLT-3 (2017), by Dean Delis and colleagues, covers ages 16 to 90, takes about 30 minutes plus a 30-minute delay, and sells as a complete kit starting at roughly 400 dollars. Survey research cited in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society indicates the CVLT family is used more often than the RAVLT in North American clinical practice, and it carries genuine standardization advantages.

The RAVLT sits at the other end of the spectrum. The same journal notes that it began as a research instrument, "remains in the public domain," and has never undergone contemporary commercial standardization. Its word lists have circulated openly in the scientific literature for decades, and its norms come from published studies rather than a single test manual. Commercial support materials do exist; Western Psychological Services sells a handbook, compiled by psychologist Michael Schmidt in 1996, that gathers more than a dozen versions, forms, and normative tables for ages 7 to 89. The test itself, however, remains one of neuropsychology's most accessible instruments, which is a large part of why researchers worldwide still use it.

The RAVLT measures one slice of cognition: the ability to learn and retain new verbal material. That slice is diagnostically powerful, but it is narrower than intelligence. Memory tests and IQ tests answer different questions, and our guide to how memory is measured explains how list learning relates to other memory paradigms.

If your question is about overall cognitive ability rather than a memory disorder, an IQ test is the right tool. The RIOT IQ test, the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test, was developed by RIOT IQ with psychometrician Dr. Russell T. Warne for adults 18 and older. It includes 15 subtests across six cognitive indices (verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, spatial ability, working memory, processing speed, and reaction time), takes about 52 minutes, and reports scores on the familiar mean-100, standard-deviation-15 scale. It does not replace an individually administered diagnostic evaluation such as a neuropsychological memory workup, but it offers a rigorous picture of general ability. You can take it at riotiq.com.

No. It measures verbal learning and memory. IQ tests sample a much broader range of abilities, including reasoning, spatial skill, and processing speed. The two kinds of tests are often given together in a full evaluation.

The word-list portions themselves are brief. Most of the elapsed time comes from the delay of about 20 to 30 minutes before the final recall, which examiners typically fill with other nonverbal tasks.

It depends on age, sex, and education. Modern normative studies, such as the Mayo Normative Studies covering ages 30 to 91, convert raw scores into demographically adjusted values, so the same raw score can be normal for one person and low for another.

List B creates interference. Comparing List B recall with Trial 1 reveals proactive interference from earlier learning, and comparing recall of List A before and after List B reveals retroactive interference from new learning.

Yes. Studies of repeated list-learning administration have found score gains across sessions even when different word lists are used. Clinicians use alternate forms and retest norms to keep practice effects from being mistaken for real improvement.

The RAVLT uses 15 semantically unrelated words and remains in the public domain, while the California Verbal Learning Test uses semantically related words and is a commercial product published by Pearson. The RAVLT has shown greater sensitivity to left temporal lobe memory impairment in epilepsy.

1. Loring, D. W., et al. (2022). The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test: Cross-validation of Mayo Normative Studies (MNS) demographically corrected norms with confidence interval estimates. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 29, 397. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

2. Stricker, N. H., et al. (2020). Mayo Normative Studies: Regression-based normative data for the Auditory Verbal Learning Test for ages 30-91 years and the importance of adjusting for sex. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 27, 211. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

3. Woods, D. L., et al. (2017). The Bay Area Verbal Learning Test (BAVLT): Normative data and the effects of repeated testing, simulated malingering, and traumatic brain injury. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 654. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

4. Alviarez-Schulze, V., et al. (2022). Validation and normative data of the Spanish version of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and associated long-term forgetting measures in middle-aged adults. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 14. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

5. Western Psychological Services. (n.d.). (RAVLT) Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test [product page]. wpspublish.com

6. Pearson. (n.d.). California Verbal Learning Test, Third Edition (CVLT-3) [product page]. pearsonassessments.com

Hero photo: A digital voice recorder on a plain white surface with REC showing on its display. Photo by Jacek Halicki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and background extended).