The 5 Key Aspects of IQ Testing: Processing Speed

My name is Elizabeth Blaetz, and I’m Head of School at Vanguard Gifted Academy. This is the second installment in our series on IQ scores, and this post will focus on processing speed.

Processing speed is the rate at which your brain takes in information and is able to translate it into learning.

Processing speed is a little controversial in the gifted world, but who says in order to be gifted you need to work fast? Some of our gifted students at Vanguard are slower-processing, but the processing rate is not really what's essential. What's essential is the value they get from the information.

Processing speed has always been included in IQ scores. Within the battery of tests, the processing speed evaluates how you process visual information and how you process auditory information. As we look at the testing, we can see whether it is better to give a student information with visuals or if it is better given in an auditory fashion.

Sometimes, a processing speed score is low because the gifted mind is thinking of all of the aspects that could go into a question — I call it over-processing. For example, if you had a test question that said, “You have a ramp set at 35 degrees. If you put a marble at the top of the ramp, which direction will the marble roll?”, the obvious answer is down the ramp, right? But gifted children think much more deeply. They’ll say, “What direction is the ramp facing? Maybe there’s a ridge in the ramp and that will direct the marble to go to the side. What if the marble falls off the back before it gets to roll down the ramp?”  This gifted mind is over-processing and thinking of all the potential possibilities to answer the question.

We also have gifted learners who are simply slower processors — there is a difference between their ability to process information and their other high level abilities. If a learner’s ability to process is slower, it takes him more time to answer questions in class.  These students are not the first ones to put their hand up to give answers, and sometimes they are not finished when it's time to be done because they are still working.  Sometimes, these children think they’re not too bright because it takes them more time to answer the question, when, in fact, their mind is poring more deeply over the question.

When you have your IQ tested, a lot of psychologists will give you two scores, one with processing and one without processing, because of the debate about whether processing speed is really an indicator of giftedness.

Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you learned some new information about processing speed, and I hope you'll join us next time when we discuss visual-spatial learning.