Effects of age, education and gender on verbal fluency.

The objective was to study the effects of age, education and gender on verbal fluency in cognitively unimpaired, older individuals. The methods used were as follows: cognitively unimpaired elderly (55-84 years) subjects (n=153), were administered category (animal) (CF) and letter (/pa/) (LF) fluency tasks, in their native language of Malayalam. Results and conclusions were (1) Level of education, but not age or gender, significantly influence LF. (2) Level of education (directly) and in the elderly subjects, age (inversely) affect CF. (3) Age, but not education, has a differential effect on the tasks of verbal fluency, influencing CF more than LF.