Social and general cognition are uniquely associated with social connectedness in later life.

ABSTRACT: The mechanisms by which older adults maintain large, complex social networks are not well understood. Prior work has primarily focused on general cognitive ability (e.g., executive function, episodic memory), largely overlooking social cognition-the ability to process, store, and remember social information. Because social cognition plays a key role in navigating social interactions and is distinct from general cognition, we examined whether general and social cognition uniquely predicted the nature of older adults' personal social networks. Our study leveraged comprehensive measures of general cognition (executive function, episodic memory), social cognition (face memory and dynamic measures of cognitive and affective theory of mind), and a rigorous measure of personal social networks fro

SUBMITTER: Krendl AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11851866 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature