This paper reports two studies which examined the relationship between problem solving strategies, response latencies, and efficient performance on measures of conceptual tempo. Study I demonstrated that teaching 8-year-old children to use efficient strategies on problem-solving tasks increased both the quality of their performance and their response latencies. In addition, it showed that the children returned to poor performance and short latencies when solving a new task to which they did not apply their strategy. Study II demonstrated that reflectives and impulsives both used short latencies and performed poorly when not using strategies, and that impulsives taught to use a strategy performed more efficiently and with longer latencies than untrained reflectives. It was concluded that response latency is a function of strategy, and that future studies should concentrate on differences in strategies of information processing between reflectives and impulsives, and not speed of responding per se. (Author/JMB)