IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v77y2022i1p18-28..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Cognitive Abilities Predict Unique Aspects of Older Adults’ Personal Social Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Anne C Krendl
  • Daniel P Kennedy
  • Kurt Hugenberg
  • Brea L Perry

Abstract

ObjectivesThe current study explores whether personal social network characteristics are associated with older adults’ memory and/or social cognitive function (e.g., ability to infer other’s mental states—theory of mind).Method120 older adults completed a social network interview, a memory measure, and 2 core measures of social cognitive functions: emotion recognition and theory of mind.ResultsVariation in memory and social cognitive abilities predicted distinct aspects of older adults’ social networks. Having better memory predicted having larger, less-dense social networks, but better theory of mind was associated with having at least one acquaintance in the network, and having more heterogeneous social relationships within the network.DiscussionTogether our findings suggest that disparate social cognitive abilities may serve unique functions, facilitating maintenance of beneficial social connections.

Suggested Citation

  • Anne C Krendl & Daniel P Kennedy & Kurt Hugenberg & Brea L Perry, 2022. "Social Cognitive Abilities Predict Unique Aspects of Older Adults’ Personal Social Networks," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 77(1), pages 18-28.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:1:p:18-28.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbab048
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yang, Yulin & Huang, Rui & Grol-Prokopczyk, Hanna & Torres, Jacqueline M., 2022. "Social network change after new-onset pain among middle-aged and older European adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:1:p:18-28.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.