Processing speed is how quickly your brain takes in simple information, makes sense of it, and responds. It underpins reading fluency, mental arithmetic, and quick decision-making, and is one of the core indices in professional cognitive assessments.

On this test, a net score around 30 correct in 60 seconds is typical, 40+ is excellent, and 50+ is exceptional. Wrong answers are subtracted, so accuracy matters as much as speed.

Practice with timed comparison tasks helps, but the biggest day-to-day factors are sleep, alertness and focus. Scanning both strings as single shapes rather than symbol by symbol is the technique fast scorers use.