Deck 5: Executive Functions

Question 1

Which skills are involved in executive functions?

A) Planning
B) Monitoring one's behavior
C) Regulating one's behavior
D) All of the above

Answer 1

All of the above

Question 2

Which is not an executive function?

A) Decision making
B) Goal-directed behavior
C) Inhibiting impulses
D) Opinion formation

Answer 2

Opinion formation

Question 3

Which is the ability to focus on environmental demands in the face of distractions, irrelevant information, and habitual or overlearned behaviors?

A) Memory
B) Attentional control
C) Self-control
D) Non-abstract focus

Answer 3

Attentional control

Question 4

Many children, adolescents, and adults have difficulty modulating unwanted thoughts, feelings, and emotions and therefore struggle to control their behavior. Which concept is this?

A) Emotional control
B) Self-control
C) Inhibitory control
D) None of the above

Question 5

A social work client is unable to modulate emotion and reward-based motivations and the result is behavioral disinhibition, which is a general behavioral tendency characterized by failure to inhibit antisocial behaviors because of susceptibility to emotional impulses and rewards. Which common social work client problem often results from behavioral disinhibition?

A) Homicidal ideation
B) Substance use and abuse
C) Poverty
D) Divorce

Question 6

Behavioral disinhibition has been linked to which behavioral outcomes?

A) Delinquency
B) Conduct problems
C) Drug problems
D) All of the above

Question 7

Which type of ADHD is most associated with cognitive and academic problems?

A) ADHD, inattention type
B) ADHD, hyperactivity/impulsivity type
C) ADHD, combined type
D) None of the above

Question 8

Behavioral genetic at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado found that executive functioning was how heritable?

A) 99%
B) 50%
C) 19%
D) 9%

Question 9

Research based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent health data found that factors such as prenatal cigarette exposure, nutrition, breastfeeding, and maternal involvement were associated with executive functions. Why are these findings important to social work professionals?

A) All are entirely preventable and addressable by interventions
B) The findings are not important to social work professionals
C) All are entirely genetic in origin
D) None of the above

Question 10

During infancy and toddlerhood, which behaviors reflect brain development relating to executive functions?

A) Engaging in eye contact
B) Attending to a caregiver
C) Looking toward sounds
D) All of the above

Question 11

Auerbach's research has shown that behavioral markers of vulnerability to ADHD can be seen during which life stage?

A) Adulthood
B) Adolescence
C) Childhood
D) Prenatally

Question 12

What percent of social work professionals from a national survey felt that psychotropic medication was a necessary treatment for many emotional disorders?

A) 5%
B) 20%
C) 62%
D) 81%

Question 13

Academic success is enhanced by which executive functions?

A) Gratification delay
B) Memory
C) Attentional control
D) All of the above

Question 14

Which is a successful interventions that targets executive functions?

A) DARE
B) GREAT
C) Scared Straight
D) Tools of the Mind

Question 15

The implications of healthy and deficient executive functioning can be seen in which life stages?

A) Fetal environment and infancy
B) Childhood
C) Adolescence
D) Adulthood
E) All of the above

Question 16

Executive functions are basically the same thing as intelligence.

Question 17

Several conditions that social work clients have, such as ADHD, autism, and various personality disorders directly relate to executive functioning deficits.

Question 18

Criminologists have shown that executive functions are not significantly associated with antisocial and criminal behavior.

Question 19

ADHD is essentially a disorder of executive functioning.

Question 20

Social workers are powerless to improve the behavioral functioning of their clients because executive functions are based in the brain.

Question 21

What are the differences between hot executive functions and cold executive functions? Why are both important for understanding social work client behavior?

Question 22

In what ways can social work professionals assist clients with managing emotion and reward given the basis of executive functions in the brain?