Objective To explore the effects of group guidance on the cognitive ability of empty nesters in a community.Methods Totally 179 empty nesters aged above 60 from a community in Xicheng District,Beijing between April 2014 and April 2015 were selected by convenience sampling,and divided into an intervention group (n=89) and a control group (n=90). Patients in the intervention group were treated by group guidance,once a week (60 min each time) for 12 months,while patients in the control group received no intervention. And the empty nesters' cognitive ability was evaluated with Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) before and after the intervention.Results The differences found in comparing the orientation,memory, linguistic competence and cognitive ability of the empty nesters in the intervention group were statistically significant (P<0.05). And the differences found in comparing the memory and cognitive ability of the empty nesters in the control group were also statistically significant (P<0.05). Before the intervention,however,there was no significant difference between the empty nesters in the two groups in cognitive ability and other indicators (P>0.05). After the intervention,the empty nesters in the observation group scored higher in orientation, attention,numeracy,linguistic competence and cognitive ability than the empty nesters in the control group (P<0.05).Conclusions Empty nesters' cognitive ability comes to weaken and decline with age,and group guidance helps to improve their cognitive ability significantly.