Here's a thought. No guarantees on the correctness of this, but I've read it somewhere at some time over the last few years. IOW, you might want to research this out further to see if it applies to your specific situation.
The thought is that water and water-based solutions permeate the dry emulsion fairly quickly (20 seconds? 30?). If the solution you use is your developer, it is sucked into the emulsion and starts working very quickly.
If however you used a water presoak, the developer gets into the emulsion by diffusion. That is, it has to displace the water that is already there before it can get in and start acting on the latent image. This is a slower and more gentle reaction. It could easily add another 30-60 seconds to your development time, depending on your agitation technique. The more active your agitation, the less time it takes for the developer to displace the water and therefore the sooner active development starts. Temperature effects the diffusion process too.
This may be why some advise a water presoak when short development times are indicated.
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