信息加工速度是衡量个体心理能力的重要指标，同时也是衡量个体心理发展水平的重要指标，是目前毕生发展研究的重要课题。对不同智力水平儿童信息加工速度发展进行比较研究，可以以时间为指标揭示儿童认知水平及发展变化的特点。本研究以8-12岁智力超常与常态儿童为被试，通过选择反应、图形匹配、短时记忆扫描、心理旋转、抽象匹配五项操作任务，对两组儿童信息加工速度的发展及差异进行了比较。研究结果发现:
       (1)在8-12岁之间，超常与常态儿童信息加工速度具有基本一致的发展趋势:随着年龄的增长，反应时明显缩短。
       (2)在8-12岁之间，超常儿童在本研究所涉及的各项任务中反应时明显短于常态儿童，且差异保持稳定。
     （3)超常和常态儿童信息加工速度的差异在不同的任务类型中，受任务条件变化的影响不同:
       在图形匹配、短时记忆扫描任务中，任务复杂程度的变化没有引起超常与常态儿童之间反应时差异的变化;在心理旋转与抽象匹配任务中，随着任务复杂程度的增大，两组儿童之间差异随之增大。

      Speed of information processing (SIP) is a key index of mental ability. It is also a key index of a person's mental development. The research on the SIP is an important project in the field of the life-span developmental study. The comparative study on SIP of children with different intellectual levels can reveal the children's cognitive level and the features of their cognitive development through the clue of the processing time.
      This study compared the development and the difference of the SIP of the children from two groups: s帅er-normal and normal children. All the children are from 8 to 12 years' old. Five performance tasks were used: choice reaction (CR), picture matching (PM), short-term memory scanning (STMS), mental rotation (MR) and abstract matching (AM). The conclusions are as the follows:
      1 .The developmental trends of the 8一12 years' old super-normal and normal children's SIP are nearly the same. The older the child, the shorter the reaction time.
      2. On the five performance tasks, the reaction time of the super-normal children are obviously shorter than the time of the normal children. The differences are stable.
      3. In the different tasks, the changing trends of the SIP differences of the two groups are different when the tasks' complexities are changed. In the picture matching (PM) and short-term memory scanning (STMS), the SIP differences of the two groups do not change when the tasks' complexities are changed. lout in  mental rotation (MR) and the abstract matching (AM), the larger the tasks' complexity, the larger the SIP difference of the two groups.