Developmental Change in Processing Speed: Domain Specificity and Stability During Childhood and Adolescence

Abstract

As children develop, they process information more rapidly. The primary aim of this study was to determine whether processing speed in the language domain develops at the same rate as global processing speed. A second aim was to determine the stability of processing speed throughout childhood and adolescence. Children (N = 116) were tested on 10 different speeded tasks at 9 and 14 years of age. Developmental change in processing speed was greater on nonlanguage tasks (sampling global processing speed) than on language tasks. Processing speed was faster on language tasks than on nonlanguage tasks at age 9 but not at age 14. There was evidence of modest continuity in processing speed across the 5-year span.