Math and verbal fluency across adulthood provide insights into aging and individual differences

Life expectancy is increasing, leading to a growing population of older adults. Although cognitive functions decline with age, mathematical functioning in later adulthood has received relatively limited research attention. The present study examined age-related changes in mathematical fluency across all four basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) to determine whether aging affects these operations uniformly or whether specific operations show greater vulnerability. We also examined how individual differences contribute to math fluency in older adults, and whether mathematical and verbal fluency show similar patterns of age-related decline. Fifty-two participants (young and older adults) completed math fluency tasks using both an oral test and the Ben-Gurion University Math Fluency test (BGU-MF), a computerized paradigm measuring accuracy and reaction times. Verbal fluency was assessed using semantic and phonological verbal fluency tasks. Results showed that older adults demonstrated lower math fluency in both formats, but operations were not equally affected: division and subtraction showed the largest age differences, while addition was relatively preserved. Among older adults, education emerged as the strongest predictor of performance, while time since retirement negatively predicted accuracy and number of exercises solved. Verbal fluency also declined with age, though to a lesser extent than math fluency, pointing to a broader age-related reduction in fluency abilities alongside a heightened vulnerability of arithmetic processing. Together, these findings suggest that while fluency relies on partially shared domain-general mechanisms, mathematical fluency—particularly in more demanding operations—shows disproportionate age-related sensitivity, with consistent effects observed across computerized and oral math formats.