The cognitively disabled person has thoughts and feelings that are the basis for making choices. When their attention is aroused, they may invest all of their available energy by forming cause and effect connections between the cues and their behavior.
Self-direction, self-regulation and choices when people are non-verbal or poorly verbal, can be detected when you learn how to observe their facial expressions and hand movements, simultaneously. The guidance is in their head and observed on their face. What the person does with their hands is important, but it occurs after the mental process that guided it. An analysis of mental processes is a careful study of each step in the process to learn what each step does and how the steps are related to each other. The purpose is to determine what the person can still do.