Research Brief #5: Self-Monitoring
by Holly Whittenburg, Whitney Ham, & Jennifer McDonough
Excerpt:
What is Self-Monitoring?
Every day we are faced with tasks that we need to finish and expectations we need to meet. These tasks can be personal, such as maintaining appropriate hygiene, or they can be professional, such as completing a task at work. For some of us, we are able to complete these tasks without support from someone or something else. Individuals with disabilities may require additional interventions to complete personal, educational, or professional tasks independently and to learn to generalize these skills across settings. Teaching self-monitoring skills can be a very useful method to facilitate independence and skill generalization (Bellini & Peters, 2008). Children, adults, and adolescents can benefit from learning how to self-monitor. Self- monitoring is defined as: the process of attending to one’s own actions and recording the presence or absence of a specified behavior (Mace, Belfiore, & Hutchinson, 2001). In other words, self-monitoring occurs when an individual keeps track of whether or not he or she has completed, are in the process of completing, or has gotten off track with a targeted skill or behavior. (Download PDF or Word Document above for the full article.)