Self Monitoring
| Physical | Communication | Cognitive | Behavioural / Emotional |
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Self-monitoring involves the process of setting goals, planning, monitoring/reviewing, and adjusting accordingly. Normally this process is automatic, however people with a brain injury may lose these abilities. It may have to become a more conscious and deliberate thought process.
As a result of an acquired brain injury there may be specific difficulties in understanding needs, setting realistic goals, making plans to achieve the goals, initiating relevant goal-directed behaviours, inhibiting distracting behaviours, monitoring performance, evaluating the outcomes in relation to goals, and making strategic adjustments as a result of this monitoring process.
Self-monitoring tends to develop in steps from:
- minimal understanding of what is easy and what is difficult, to
- increasing understanding that some activities/functions are easy and some are difficult, to
- recognition that a mistake has been made after it is made, to
- anticipating difficult activities and doing something in advance to succeed.
Self-monitoring is therefore closely tied to self-awareness of strengths and weaknesses. If a person with a brain injury is not aware of difficulties in a specific domain of functioning, or actively resist acknowledging such difficulties, they are unlikely to effectively monitor their performance in that domain. It may therefore be necessary to use rehabilitation to develop such awareness or overcome resistance.
