ON MENTAL MULTIPLICATION AND AGE

In 2 experiments, younger and older adults were presented with simple multiplication problems (e.g., 4 X 7 = 28 and 5 X 3 = 10) for their timed, true or false judgments. All of the effects typically obtained in basic research on mental arithmetic were obtained, that is, reaction time (a) increased with the size of the problem, (b) was slowed for answers deviating only a small amount from the correct value, and (c) was slowed when related (eg., 7 X 4 = 21) versus unrelated (eg., 7 X 4 = 18) answers were presented. Older adults were slower in their judgments. Most important, age did not interact significantly with problem size or split size. The authors suggest that elderly adults' central processes, such as memory retrieval and decision making, did not demonstrate the typical age deficit because of the skilled nature of these processes in simple arithmetic.