When we factor analyzed the 1926 SAT alongside CORE, a distinct factor emerged that appears only on speeded tests. We have tentatively named it Speed, which we theorize as reasoning speed. In a broader model that also includes the GRE and the AGCT, it's content invariant, appearing across verbal, quantitative, and spatial tasks.
Our preliminary findings suggest that Speed is strongly related to general intelligence and is clearly distinguishable from the perceptual speed measured by CORE's Processing Speed Index. Its strongest indicators are timed reasoning tasks. What it reflects is still an open question: it may involve attentional control and the speed at which people process relations, or it may not reflect particular cognitive mechanisms at all.
SPEED was created to investigate this factor. It focuses on timed analytical reasoning, one of the areas where Speed is most prominent, and the data it collects will help clarify what Speed is and how it relates to other abilities.
Background post on SPEED: "Mental Speed is the Dark Matter of Psychometrics" -Nark
Take the test here: SPEED
