I would say that all test takers do take notes, it is just that some of them do it on the scratch paper and some take mental notes in their heads. Any but the most advanced test takers should probably be writing something down until they find that this is not needed.
I think you will find that anyone who just reads right through the passage with no pause at all is set up for trouble unless they are just
very gifted in this area.
The key, whether you write out the notes or just make a point to keep them in your mind is to pause periodically and gather yourself before you proceed. Ask yourself what the main idea of that paragraph was - try to integrate what you just read with the rest of the passage - if you find that you do not understand what you read then you should go back and re-read that section or that paragraph.
One more thing to note - ironically the things that people most want to write down are the least important to write down!! Names, dates, numbers are all easy to locate if you need to return to the passage and are only really going to be the answer for specific questions so you will have the opportunity to return to the text for those. The things that you need to understand and take note of are the things that move the passage along but are harder to scan and locate later on - the development of the theory, the course of the historical action, the results of the business plan. Your notes need to be at the right level, detailed enough to capture the flow of the article but not so detailed that you are rewriting the passage.
Here is an article that I wrote about taking notes on Reading Comp.
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/08/ ... prehension
and Zeza - if you take down the main idea of each paragraph you should be able to look to those notes and understand what the scope is. It is what the passage is actually talking about. "Astronomy" is not a scope. "White Dwarf Stars" is not a scope. "Three theories of the formation of our solar system" is more like what the scope should be...
