Self-awareness and traumatic brain injury outcome

Impaired self-awareness following a traumatic brain injury (TBI) can reduce the effectiveness of rehabilitation, resulting in poorer outcomes. However, little is understood about how the multi-dimensional aspects of self-awareness may differentially change with recovery and impact outcome. Thus, this study examined four self-awareness variables represented in the Dynamic Comprehensive Model of Awareness: metacognitive awareness, anticipatory awareness, error-monitoring and self-regulation.

This study evaluated change of the self-awareness measures with recovery from TBI and whether the self-awareness measures predicted community re-integration at follow-up.

Participants were 90 individuals with moderate-to-severe TBI who were tested acutely following injury and 90 age-matched controls. Forty-nine of the TBI participants and 49 controls were re-tested after 6 months.

Results revealed that the TBI group's error-monitoring performance was significantly poorer than controls at both baseline and follow-up. Regression analyses revealed that the self-awareness variables at follow-up were predictive of community re-integration, with error-monitoring being a unique predictor.

The results highlight the importance of error-monitoring and suggest that interventions targeted at improving error-monitoring may be particularly beneficial. Understanding the multi-dimensional nature of self-awareness will further improve rehabilitation efforts and understanding of the theoretical basis of self-awareness.