Short-Term Coupling Associations Between State Loneliness and Cognitive Performance in Daily Life Among Older Adults

Objectives: Despite extensive efforts to study individual differences in loneliness and neurocognitive health, little is known about how within-person changes in state loneliness relate to cognitive performance. This study addressed this gap by examining the association between within-person variation in state loneliness and cognitive performance assessed objectively in daily life.

Methods: Participants were 313 community-dwelling older adults (70-90 years) who reported momentary feelings of loneliness and completed smartphone-based cognitive tests 5 times daily for 14 consecutive days. Mobile cognitive tests assess visual associative memory, processing speed, and spatial memory.

Results: At the day level, average state loneliness levels were negatively related to cognitive performance on the same day and subsequent day. Consistent with the day-level analysis, momentary assessments of increased loneliness were consistently linked to worse cognitive performance on concurrent assessments. However, moments characterized by lower cognitive performance predicted higher levels of loneliness 3-4 hr later (next occasion), but not vice versa.

Discussion: The findings suggest a prospective association between loneliness and cognitive performance, with higher daily loneliness negatively associated with cognitive performance on the same day and predicting worse performance the following day. Notably, within a single day, lower cognitive performance at a given moment predicted elevated loneliness later in the day. This highlights a complex, reciprocal relationship-loneliness predicting and being predicted by cognitive performance depending on timescale.