Visual information-processing speed in reflective and impulsive children.

A backward-masking procedure was used to measure the rate of visual information processing in 8- and 10-year-old reflective and impulsive children. The test stimulus (TS) and the masking stimulus (MS) which followed it were presented tachistoscopially. The subject's information-processing threshold was defined as the next highest TS-MS interval above the interval where at least 3 of the 4 TSs were incorrectly identified. Reflective children were significantly faster than impulsive children at processing information. This finding was related to research indicating that reflective and impulsive children employ similar cognitive strategies; it was suggested that performance differences between these children might be related to reflective children employing their strategies with more adequate information.