Intelligence and information processing during a visual search task in children: an event-related potential study.

To investigate the differences in event-related potential parameters related to children's intelligence, we selected 15 individuals from an experimental class of intellectually gifted children and 13 intellectually average children as control to finish three types of visual search tasks (Chinese words, English letters and Arabic numbers). We recorded the electroencephalogram and calculated the peak latencies and amplitudes. Our results suggest comparatively increased P3 amplitudes and shorter P3 latencies in brighter individuals than in less intelligent individuals, but this expected neural efficiency effect interacted with task content. The differences were explained by a more spatially and temporally coordinated neural network for more intelligent children.