For most of my life I thought of myself as smart. In my 30s now I’ve realized I just have an unreasonably good memory, both long term and short term recall. In other areas of intelligence I’m average.
I would bet that many of those identifying with this study are excelling in other dimensions of intelligence.
I kind of had the opposite experience. It seemed like I could figure things out quickly, but not especially remember them. Memory definitely helps, and as I got older and my brain doesn't seem to work at the same clock speed, memory helps a lot more and seems easier than figuring things out again all of the time.
So, I kind of thought of it like a computer. You can sometimes have a look-up table of pre-computed things, but if you had more processor than memory, you'd go the other direction and re-compute instead of using memory/storage.
I would bet that many of those identifying with this study are excelling in other dimensions of intelligence.