Verbal achievement, reading and language abilities correlate strongly with mathematics achievement (r = .42 to .67)¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r3 · q3 · i3 large · n=30 meta-analyses, 66 correlations from 13,853 effect sizes (~4.66 million participants)
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Verbal achievement (r = .67), reading (.52), comprehensive language (.51), mathematics vocabulary (.49) and language ability (.42) form the strongest group of correlates of mathematics achievement. These are correlations compiled across meta-analyses: they describe how strongly the characteristic goes with mathematics achievement, not what causes it.

Subclaims¶

q3 i3 Verbal achievement (r = .67), reading (.52), comprehensive language (.51), mathematics vocabulary (.49) and language ability (.42) form the strongest group of correlates of mathematics achievement. → Breit et al. 2025

Evidence¶

Breit et al. 2025¶

Breit, M., Schneider, M., & Preckel, F. (2025). Mathematics achievement and learner characteristics: A systematic review of meta-analyses. Learning and Individual Differences, 118, 102621. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2024.102621

q3 · systematic review of meta-analyses · i3 · large effect, r = .42 to .67 · n=30 meta-analyses, 66 correlations from 13,853 effect sizes (~4.66 million participants) · review · r3

The review compiles zero-order correlations from published meta-analyses (each with at least ten effect sizes, the largest one kept where several covered a variable), found by a systematic PsycINFO search in July 2024. It pools nothing further and controls for nothing: many of these characteristics correlate with one another, so a correlation here says how strongly the characteristic goes with mathematics achievement, not that it causes it. Verbal achievement r = .67 (Möller et al. 2009, k = 69, school and university), reading .52 (Ünal et al. 2023, k = 2,853, ~1.28 million participants), comprehensive language .51 and language .42 (Peng et al. 2020, k = 2,066), mathematics vocabulary .49 (Lin et al. 2021, k = 55, children and adolescents), vocabulary .42, oral comprehension .43, phonological processing .35 and rapid automatized naming .31–.41. Age moderation was reported for language and mathematics vocabulary, and neither changed significantly with age.

Discussion¶

The authors offer several explanations, untested here: common causes such as intelligence and socioeconomic status, language as the medium of mathematics instruction and word problems, and mutual effects. They conclude that early identification of verbal difficulties matters for mathematics too, because those difficulties generalise beyond language subjects. The contrast often drawn between 'verbal' and 'mathematical' learners runs against these correlations.

Related Claims¶

• Mathematics achievement correlates more strongly with learners' knowledge, skills and cognitive abilities than with their personality traits, goals or emotions
• Spatial ability correlates moderately with mathematics achievement (r = .25), less strongly than verbal ability — related
• Mathematics self-concept correlates strongly with mathematics achievement (r = .43), while verbal self-concept barely does (r = .12) — related
• Math Reasoning is more strongly correlated with reading comprehension than Numerical Operations is, and the two math measures are highly correlated — related
• Children with developmental language disorder and strong verbal reasoning could partly compensate delays in mathematics at the individual level, though group-level analyses revealed no protective effects (reported by the editors, citing Kleemans et al.) — related