Abstract: Two typical visual inspection time tasks, line inspection time and digital inspection time, were employed in the present experiment. 172 children aged from 8- to 12-years-old (83 intellectual supernormal and 89 normal) were tested individually with the two IT tasks on computer. Meanwhile, in order to get their IQ scores, all subjects were asked to complete Cattell’s culture free test. The schooling effect on speed of information processing was explored in the present study too. The results indicated that the inspection time of supernormal and normal children decreased gradually as their ages increased, but the developmental speeds or developmental curves were different on different inspection time tasks. There were no significant gender differences in the two tasks and three types of ages. Moreover, the inspection time of supernormal children was significantly faster than the normal children on the tasks in different ages. The correlation coefficients between inspection time and IQ scores in both supernormal and normal children were significant. And no schooling effects on children’s speed of information processing (IT) were found. Comparing the developmental speed of the inspection time of the two samples, suggested that the knowledge and experience from schools have no effects on the development of children’s inspection time. And the correlations between inspection time and IQ scores of both groups are significant.

Key words: supernormal children, inspection time, intelligence, speed of information processing