diff --git a/activesupport/CHANGELOG b/activesupport/CHANGELOG
index 2c70cecc2b5ccb119bf8d79ed88348e634248bfd..1fe697a227e674fd34cc76129a287d51bb27e3c8 100644
--- a/activesupport/CHANGELOG
+++ b/activesupport/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 *SVN*
 
+* Increased the speed of indifferent hash access by using Hash#default.  #1436 [Nicholas Seckar]
+
 * Added that "   " is now also blank? (using strip if available)
 
 * Fixed Dependencies so all modules are able to load missing constants #1173 [Nicholas Seckar]
@@ -137,4 +139,4 @@
 
 * Added that Inflector now accepts Symbols and Classes by calling .to_s on the word supplied
 
-* Added time unit extensions to Fixnum that'll return the period in seconds, like 2.days + 4.hours.
\ No newline at end of file
+* Added time unit extensions to Fixnum that'll return the period in seconds, like 2.days + 4.hours.
diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/hash/indifferent_access.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/hash/indifferent_access.rb
index 91445610e27b0f742c2a9323155094c108c5e9ed..92653171f974313b697ab0adedd96a0a6f898171 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/hash/indifferent_access.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/hash/indifferent_access.rb
@@ -8,16 +8,10 @@ def initialize(constructor = {})
       super(constructor)
     end
   end
-  
-  alias_method :regular_reader, :[] unless method_defined?(:regular_reader)
-  
-  def [](key)
-    case key
-      when Symbol: regular_reader(key.to_s) || regular_reader(key)
-      when String: regular_reader(key) || regular_reader(key.to_sym)
-      else regular_reader(key)
-    end
-  end
+ 
+  def default(key)
+    self[key.to_s] if key.is_a?(Symbol)
+  end  
 
   alias_method :regular_writer, :[]= unless method_defined?(:regular_writer)