ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Neurocognitive Aging and Behavior
Volume 17 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2025.1579485
This article is part of the Research TopicPreserving Emotional Health in Aging: Unraveling the Neural Mechanisms and Implications for Neurodegenerative DiseasesView all articles
Effects of social support on cognitive frailty among the older adults in China: mediation of psychological resilience and moderated mediation of education
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jinan Disease Prevention and Control Center, Jinan, China
- 2School of Public Health, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong Province, China
- 3Jinan Mental Health Center, Jinan, China
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Objectives: Previous research has revealed a relationship between social support and cognitive frailty. However, the underlying mechanisms of this connection have still not been well explored. The study aimed to investigate the effect of social support on cognitive frailty, mediated by psychological resilience and to examine the moderated mediation effect of education.Methods: A total of 1758 older adults aged 60 years and above were included in the analysis. A descriptive analysis was conducted to describe the sample characteristics. The moderated mediation models were examined using Mplus 8.3, in which the mediation variables was psychological resilience, and the moderation variable was education.Results: The prevalence of cognitive frailty among the older adults was 4.3%. Social support had a significant negative predictive effect on the cognitive frailty((B = -0.066, p < 0.01), the psychological resilience partially mediated the relationship between social support and cognitive frailty(B = -0.103, p < 0.001). Compared to illiterate, primary school (B = -0.184, p < 0.05), middle school (B = -0.244, p < 0.01) and high school or above (B = -0.315, p < 0.01) could regulate the relationship between social support and psychological resilience in older adults.Discussion: We present a conceptual model containing the mediated effects of psychological resilience and the moderated effect of education on the relationship between social support and cognitive frailty. We believe this model enhances understanding of these associations and could be instrumental in formulating intervention strategies to mitigate the incidence of cognitive frailty in older adults.
Keywords: cognitive frailty, social support, psychological resilience, Education, moderated mediation
Received: 19 Feb 2025; Accepted: 25 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Ma, Wei, Wu, Cui and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Liangliang Cui, Jinan Mental Health Center, Jinan, China
Chengchao Zhou, School of Public Health, Shandong University, Jinan, 250012, Shandong Province, China
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