Speed & Intelligence

Speed of Information Processing

How many times have we heard references to someone we know, who is labeled as clever because he is fast
at grasping a concept or quick on some mental arithmetic and phrases used to describe them like “speed of
cop-on” when we associate speed with intelligence. It seems one could almost say that being fast is
synonymous with being smart. Certainly in the field of psychometrics speed of information processing and it’s
correlation with g, the proxy for intelligence is of much interest and the subject of numerous studies. Speed of
information processing can easily be measured by elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs). An example of this,
would be a task requiring a correct response to a visual stimuli (e.g. whether an arrow that appears on a
screen is pointing left or right) of which the time for the response is measured from the time the stimuli appears
to the time a subject responds by pressing a button. It almost seems counterintuitive that such simple tasks,
reducible to basic fundamental neuro-physiological functions, of which involves no cognitive operations, can
capture the complex and multi-dimensional quality of the brain i.e. intelligence. However many studies have
been carried out since the 1980s, and have shown robust correlations (negative) between the reaction time
(RT) of responses to ECTs and intelligence.

Typical correlations between single ECTs (elementary cognitive tasks) and IQ are moderate, ranging from -0.2
to -0.4 (Jensen 1998, Sheppard 2007) but increase dramatically when tests are carried out using a battery of
ECTs or if the complexity of the ECTs increases by using competing tasks (Fogarty & Stankov 1995) or dual
tasks (Jensen 1998), although the ECTs bear no resemblance to conventional psychometric tests. Jensen
explains that the reason that a battery of ECTs correlate higher with g, is due to the fact that the “global” speed
component is cumulative to the battery with every ECT added to the test battery, while the unique non-
cognitive speed component for each ECT is only added once. This is analogous to adding various items in a
conventional IQ test, which increases the test correlations with other tests. With respect to speed of processing
between high and low ability groups, the RT difference between High IQ subjects and Low IQ subjects are in
ways that are seemingly paradoxical. A small percentage of the fastest RTs of low IQ subjects are almost as
fast as the fastest RTs of High IQ subjects and faster that the median RTs of the High IQ subjects (Jensen
1998). But where they differ most is in the longest RTs produced. The High IQ subjects almost never produce
any RTs that are as slow as most of the RTs produced by the Low IQ subjects. More importantly, it is the
differences in longer RTs that are highly correlated with IQ and not the shortest RTs as observed by Larson et
al. (1990) and Krantzler (1992).
Fig 1- “The worst performance rule”: The RT data from the original experiment by Larson and Alderton (1990, Table 4) were divided into
16 bands, the mean of which was correlated with g. Mean RT from the slowest bands correlates more strongly with g than the mean RT
from the fastest bands.

Test Taking Speed

A cursory look at a typical speeded IQ test like the Cattell Culture Fair III (CCFT) which is considered a good
measure of fluid intelligence and highly speeded (50 items to be completed in a time frame of 12.5 minutes or
an average of 15 seconds per item) seemingly, indicates that speed is indeed an important component of
intelligence or a part of intelligence if you like. Does this mean that a high IQ measured on the CCFT would
require a high speed of information processing? Vernon (1989) carried out five studies of which he extracted a
g factor from a battery of tests which included the WAIS + RAPM and the MAB (Multidimensional Aptitude
Battery) of which he labeled IQg . He also extracted a general factor from a battery of ECTs from which he
labeled RTg. Paradoxically, he found that the correlations between the untimed version of the RAPM and RTg
was the highest and in contrast the digi-symbol, a speeded subtest of the WAIS battery had the lowest
correlation with RTg bearing in mind that the RAPM had no commonality in content with any of the ECTs.
Further, Jensen (1998) found that the time taken by university graduates on the RAPM was not significantly
correlated to the number of questions they answered correctly. Consequently, he distinguishes test taking
speed with speed of information processing and considers these to be completely different abilities, with test
taking speed more associated with personality and not cognitive factors.

Working Memory, Complexity & Speed

Theories on the limited capacity of working memory (WM) tend to lend support to the correlation between
speed of processing and ability. It is theorized that working memory has two properties which make speed of
information processing crucial for solving tasks in a given amount of time. WM is limited in its capacity to store
information and the information entered into storage decays over time. An example of a WM task is
remembering a 10-digit phone number and then adding the digits to produce an answer. The capacity of the
WM in retaining the 10 digits is crucial before the individual can start the addition process. The cause of him
failing to complete the task successfully may be attributed to two reasons; i) if his WM capacity is low, the 10-
digit information is lost before the addition can be completed or even take place, or ii) the speed of which he
adds the 10 digits is too slow and he fails to execute the adding operation before the information in WM
eventually decays and has to be re-entered. Hence, the speed with which the information can be processed is
a decisive factor to explain the differences in ability of individuals (Vernon 1983) since the information retained
in working memory decays if not processed in time. Since task complexity increases the demand it places on
the retention of the information in WM, then it stands to reason that the successful processing of the task would
then be mediated by the speed of which it can be processed. In other words the heavier the burden on working
memory, the more beneficial speed of processing becomes lending support to a speed dependent WM.

Vernon and Kantor (1986) predicted an increase in correlations between speed of processing and reasoning
from timed to untimed conditions. They reasoned that if time constraints are relaxed for reasoning tasks (which
correlates highly with WM) the correlations between speed of processing and reasoning should be higher since
the measure under untimed conditions will contain more speed variance, due to the fact that under untimed
conditions the subjects are able to work through all of the items in a test, and the higher ability subjects will be
able to solve the hardest items (not usually possible under timed conditions), thereby introducing more
variance in scores. The opposing hypothesis to this is that under timed conditions the more able will be able to
go through more items, with a higher percentage of correct responses, since they will work faster and more
accurately through the items compared to the slower subjects. So placing time constraints will increase the
correlations between speed of processing and speeded reasoning. Wilhelm et al. (2001), sets out to test this
hypothesis by using 367 high school students. Test instruments using reasoning and processing speed
subtests were obtained from the Berlin Model of Intelligence Test (BIS-4) of which were divided into 2 groups
of reasoning tests and 1 group of speed test. The subjects were divided into 6 groups, of which all were tested
on both groups of reasoning tests under timed and untimed conditions and 4 groups worked on the speed of
processing tests. The correlations between tests taken by all 6 groups are summarized in table 4, reproduced
below;

Speed of Processing Speeded Reasoning Un-speeded Reasoning

Speed of Processing 0.82 0.49 0.34

Speeded Reasoning 0.69 0.64

Un-speeded Reasoning 0.69

The correlations between speed of processing and speeded reasoning is higher than that between speed of
processing and un-speeded reasoning which runs counter to what was hypothesized by Vernon & Kantor
based on the concept of a speed dependent WM, although the relatively lower correlations are still significant
enough that a speed dependent WM cannot be dismissed outright.

Speed, Item Difficulty & Ability

What would the correlations look like if with increase task difficulty, and if the performance of individuals on the
tasks were calibrated according to ability? Would we still get the negative correlations so ubiquitous in the
numerous studies carried out on information processing tasks? Danthiir et. al. (2005) carried out studies on
186 undergraduate university students and subjects recruited from, the wider community, with Gs (processing
speed tasks or ECTs), Gf and Gc tasks. CFA was carried out on the scores for the 3 types of tasks (4 each for
GS, Gf and Gc tasks) to confirm the ability factors labeled as Gs, Gf and Gc. What they found was that as the
item difficulty increase, the response times for both Gf and Gc items increased with larger latencies for Gf
items compared to Gc items of similar difficulty. The findings for the easy item are as expected where the
subjects higher on Gf perform faster for easy items but slower as the item difficulty increases. A similar
relationship is found for Gc items. This means that the correlations start from negative, reducing as the level of
difficulty increases to a point where positive correlations are obtained for the hardest items. The negative
correlations are highest for the easiest items, with negative correlations higher on Gc items compared to Gf
items. This means processing speed seems to play a more important role for easier tasks (more so for Gc
items) compared to more difficult items. Correlations between Mean Correct Response Latencies for the
easiest items and Ability Factor Scores, are -0.48 with Gc, -0.38 with Gf and -0.25 with Gs for Gc items, and -
0.20 with Gc, -0.26 with Gf and -0.22 with Gs for Gf items. Please refer to figure 2 (from the original paper).

A re-analysis of the data was carried out, this time with the response latencies calibrated according to ability of
the subjects. The scores were divided into 3 ability groups for each of the Gf and Gc items with the results on
table 4 re-tabulated below;

Table 4:Mean correct response latencies (SD) for ability groups, with item difficulty calibrated for ability.
Gf Items Gc Items
Ability
Easy Mid-Easy Medium Hard Easy Mid-Easy Medium Hard
latency latency latency latency latency latency latency latency
 
(ms) (ms) (ms) (ms) (ms) (ms) (ms) (ms)
12470 28820 33982 40409 8530 9711 11285 12068
1
(3162) (10456) (11666) (19884) (1731) (1878) (2703) (3211)
 24845 32565 53384 56856 9457 11007 11983 14081
2
(8966) (8325) (20174) (21867) (2066) (3206) (2871) (4776)
31355 35861 57428 69627 9186 10834 11628 13256
3
(7931) (10961) (17898) (28932) (2025) (2879) (3583) (3728)
Note: Statistics reported for Gf item difficulties are with participants grouped according to Gf ability; statistics
reported for Gc item difficulties are with participants grouped according to Gc ability. Response
latencies are in ms. 1 = below average, 2 = average, 3 = above average.

For the Gf items, the latencies increase from easy to difficult items across ability groups with the highest
latencies for the highest ability group. The latencies are highest for the high ability group even for the easiest
items. For the Gc items the latencies increase from easy to the hardest items with the highest latencies
demonstrated among the average group. The latencies are much higher in general for the Gf items compared
to the Gc items. What is obvious from the results are i) the data does not suggest that the subjects higher on
Gf and Gc are faster on the easy items nor does data suggest that ii) the difference in latencies reduces the
more difficult the items become. This pattern or rather the rank order of latencies with respect to item difficulty
still holds, although to a much lesser extent for the Gc items. An important point to note is that the difficulty of
the items used for the higher ability group are harder than that for the lower ability group, and hence what can
be correctly concluded is that the high ability group uses more time for each increment in difficulty of the items,
compared to the low ability group. The findings are different from that showed in table 2, where the high ability
subjects (on both Gf and Gc items) are faster on the easy items. It would seem evident from this study, that the
speed of information processing or the reciprocal measure i.e. the magnitude of the latencies are mediated by
item difficulty and when calibrated for ability, are dependent on the ability level of the subjects. Also the results
of this study, seemingly provides conclusions that run counter to what other studies have indicated with faster
processing speed for higher ability subjects. Interestingly, in testing how mental speed relates to real-world
criteria such as school performance, Rindermann & Neubauer (2002) with their structural equation models
obtained correlations of school performance (on 271 students between years 9 to 11) with IQ of 0.5,
processing speed and school performance of 0.35 (0.39 for high ability subjects compared to 0.26 for average
ability subjects). They concluded that although processing speed can “index” performance such as school
grades and cognitive abilities, it cannot substitute psychometric intelligence or g since the correlations between
school performance and speed of processing cannot be as high as that between school performance and IQ.

It seems then that the differences in general ability is more pronounced when measured using more complex
cognitive operations and tasks and that IQ tests are still a more reliable measure of cognitive ability compared
to applying an apparent common index graded along a single continuum of measurement, speed.

References:
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3. Jensen A. R. (1998)- The G Factor, The Science of mental Ability (Praeger).
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and Individual Differences Vol 13, Issue 3 March 1992 Pages 255-261 .
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