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Updated: Jun 10, 2025

Multi-Modal Home Sleep Monitoring in Older Adults
Published on: January 26, 2019
Nocturnal Awakening Associated with Greater Social Disconnectedness in Older Adults: The Compensatory Role of
Hai-Xin Jiang1, Cody Ding2, Jing Yu1
1Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Objectives:
This study aimed to explore the association between sleep and social disconnectedness by examining the role of global cognitive function in diverse samples of older adults.
Methods:
Study 1 compared differences in social disconnectedness between older adults with clinical sleep disorders and healthy sleepers. Studies 2 and 3 examined the relationship between objective sleep and social disconnectedness in community-dwelling older adults from two independent datasets. In the three studies, we analyzed the moderating effect of global cognitive function in the association between objective sleep and social disconnectedness.
Results:
Study 1 showed that older adults with clinical sleep disorders had greater social disconnectedness, among whom those with better cognition showed less influence of sleep disorder on social disconnectedness. Studies 2 and 3 showed that nocturnal awakening was robustly associated with social disconnectedness in community-dwelling older adults. Global cognitive function moderated this association, counteracting the negative effect of nocturnal awakening on social function.
Conclusions:
These findings suggest a relationship between objective sleep, particularly nocturnal awakening, and social disconnectedness, and the compensatory role of global cognitive function.
Clinical Implications:
Geriatric caregivers are encouraged to consider cognitive interventions to mitigate sleep-related, specifically excessive nocturnal awakening-related, social disconnectedness in older adults.
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