ASWB MSW EXAM VOCAB QUESTIONS AND
ANSWERS | VERIFIED | GRADED A
/ Aversion Therapy - Answer-any treatment aimed at reducing the attractiveness of a
stimulus or a behavior by repeated parking of it with an averse stimulus. An example is
treating alcoholism with Antabuse.
/.Biofeedback - Answer-behavior trying program that teaches a person how to control
certain functions such as hear rate, blood pressure, temperature and muscular tension.
Biofeedback is often used for ADHD and Anxiety.
/.Extinction - Answer-Witholding a reinforcer that normally follows a behavior. Behavior
that fails to produce reinforcement will eventually cease.
/.Flooding - Answer-a treatment procedure in which a client's anxiety is extinguished by
prolonged real or imagined exposure to high intensity feared stimuli.
/.In vivo desensitization - Answer-pairing and movement through a hierarchy of anxiety
from least to most anxiety provoking situations; takes place in "real" setting.
/.Modeling - Answer-method of instruction that involves an individual demonstrating the
behavior to be acquired by a client
/.Rational emotive therapy (RET) - Answer--cognitively-oriented therapy in which the
social worker seeks to change client's irrational beliefs by argument, persuasion, and
rational reevaluation and by teaching the client to counter self-defeating thinking with
new, nondistressing self-statements.
/.Shaping - Answer-method used to train a new behavior by prompting and reinforcing
successive approximations of the desired behavior.
/.Systematic Desensitization - Answer-An anxiety-inhibiting response cannot occur at
the same times as the anxiety response. Anxiety producing stimulus is paired with
relaxation producing stimulus produces a relaxation response. At each step a client's
reaction of fear or dread is overcome by pleasant feeling engendered as the new
behavior is reinforced by receiving a reward. The reward could be a compliment, a gift
or relaxation
/.Time out - Answer-Removal of something desirable - negative punishment technique
/.token economy - Answer-a client receives tokens as reinforcement for performing
specified behaviors. The tokens function as current within the environment and can be
exchanged for desired good, services or privileges.
,/.Deficiency needs - Answer-Physiological, Safety, Social, and Esteem
/.Growth Needs - Answer-self-actualization
/.When is the most critical period for developing attachment? - Answer-the first 5 years
/.Authoritarian parenting - Answer-children are expected to follow the struct rules
established by the parents.
/.Permissive parenting - Answer-parents have very few demands on their children, take
on the role as a friend
/.Authoritative parenting - Answer-parents set limits and enforce rules but are flexible
and listen to their children
/.Uninvolved parenting - Answer-few hands, low responsiveness and little
communication
/.Harriet Bartlett - Answer-help people identify and resolve or reduce problems arising
out of disequilibrium between individuals, groups and the environment; and to seek out
and strengthen maximum potential of individuals
/.Helen Perlman - Answer-help individuals effectively copy with social functioning
problems
/.Mary Woods and Florence Hollis - Answer-Help people cope with intrapsychic,
interpersonal, and environmental problems that cause personal suffering
/.John Dewey - Answer-known for role theory, problem solving theory
/.Motivations for change in problem solving approach - Answer--Disequilibrium between
what is and what the client wants
-conscious desire to achieve change
-positive expectations based on new life possibilities
-the strength of a supportive relationship and positive expectation of the worker
/.4 P's of basic elements involved in treatment - Answer-a person has a problem, comes
to a place for help given through a process
/.Crisis Intervention Assessment - Answer--exploration of the stress- producing event or
situation and individual's response to it, as well as response the crises in the recent past
-Characteristics signs and phases, patterns of adaption and maladaption to crisis
-necessity for quick action stimulates a highly forces assessment that emphasizes
current state of functioning and internal and environmental supports and deficits
, /.Important social workers associated with crisis intervention - Answer-Lydia Rapoport,
Howard Parad, Rosemary Lukton
/.Behavioral treatment planning - Answer--Priority problems are selected and their
maintain conditions are identified.
-The client is engaged in establishing targets for change.
-Baseline data are established about frequency of the behavior
-A written or an oral contract is developed
/.Important social workers associated with behavior modification - Answer-Edwin
Thomas and Joel Fisher
/.Treatment planning for Cognitive theory - Answer--Establish baseline data: The client's
negative automatic thoughts ("I'm such a loser"), distortions ("he must be thinking how
stupid I am") and dysfunctional beliefs ("I have to be perfect at what I do")
-Establish target goals for change and alternative ways of thinking
-Agree to contact for goals, homework, time frame
/.Boundary - Answer-the means of organization by which the parts of a system can be
differeientated from the environment in which the system exists and which differentiates
subsystems from one another.
/.Subsystem - Answer-a subset of the whole system
/.Entropy - Answer-The randomness, disorder or chaos in a system
/.Homeostasis - Answer-a system will make changes or adjustments to maintain an
accustomed balance.
/.Structural family therapy - Answer-(Salvador Minuchin) strengthening boundaries
around the family subsystems when enmeshed or increasing flexibility when overly rigid
/.Strategic Family Therapy - Answer-(Jay Haley and Chole Madanes) asks what
function does the symptom serve i the family? that is , what payoff is there both to the
system for continuing the symptom? Problem-focused behavioral change. Emphasizes
parental power and hierarchical family relationships.
/.Don Jackson - Answer-known for his focus on power relationships and his theory of
"double bind" communication in families (i.e. two conflicting sets of messages
communicated at the same time that create or perpetuate a no-win pathological system
/.Murray Bowen Family systems theory - Answer-Focused on:
-role of thinking vs. feeling in relationship systems
-role of emotional triangles
family issues that reappear over several generations, family projection process in which
parents transmit their emotional problems to a child
ANSWERS | VERIFIED | GRADED A
/ Aversion Therapy - Answer-any treatment aimed at reducing the attractiveness of a
stimulus or a behavior by repeated parking of it with an averse stimulus. An example is
treating alcoholism with Antabuse.
/.Biofeedback - Answer-behavior trying program that teaches a person how to control
certain functions such as hear rate, blood pressure, temperature and muscular tension.
Biofeedback is often used for ADHD and Anxiety.
/.Extinction - Answer-Witholding a reinforcer that normally follows a behavior. Behavior
that fails to produce reinforcement will eventually cease.
/.Flooding - Answer-a treatment procedure in which a client's anxiety is extinguished by
prolonged real or imagined exposure to high intensity feared stimuli.
/.In vivo desensitization - Answer-pairing and movement through a hierarchy of anxiety
from least to most anxiety provoking situations; takes place in "real" setting.
/.Modeling - Answer-method of instruction that involves an individual demonstrating the
behavior to be acquired by a client
/.Rational emotive therapy (RET) - Answer--cognitively-oriented therapy in which the
social worker seeks to change client's irrational beliefs by argument, persuasion, and
rational reevaluation and by teaching the client to counter self-defeating thinking with
new, nondistressing self-statements.
/.Shaping - Answer-method used to train a new behavior by prompting and reinforcing
successive approximations of the desired behavior.
/.Systematic Desensitization - Answer-An anxiety-inhibiting response cannot occur at
the same times as the anxiety response. Anxiety producing stimulus is paired with
relaxation producing stimulus produces a relaxation response. At each step a client's
reaction of fear or dread is overcome by pleasant feeling engendered as the new
behavior is reinforced by receiving a reward. The reward could be a compliment, a gift
or relaxation
/.Time out - Answer-Removal of something desirable - negative punishment technique
/.token economy - Answer-a client receives tokens as reinforcement for performing
specified behaviors. The tokens function as current within the environment and can be
exchanged for desired good, services or privileges.
,/.Deficiency needs - Answer-Physiological, Safety, Social, and Esteem
/.Growth Needs - Answer-self-actualization
/.When is the most critical period for developing attachment? - Answer-the first 5 years
/.Authoritarian parenting - Answer-children are expected to follow the struct rules
established by the parents.
/.Permissive parenting - Answer-parents have very few demands on their children, take
on the role as a friend
/.Authoritative parenting - Answer-parents set limits and enforce rules but are flexible
and listen to their children
/.Uninvolved parenting - Answer-few hands, low responsiveness and little
communication
/.Harriet Bartlett - Answer-help people identify and resolve or reduce problems arising
out of disequilibrium between individuals, groups and the environment; and to seek out
and strengthen maximum potential of individuals
/.Helen Perlman - Answer-help individuals effectively copy with social functioning
problems
/.Mary Woods and Florence Hollis - Answer-Help people cope with intrapsychic,
interpersonal, and environmental problems that cause personal suffering
/.John Dewey - Answer-known for role theory, problem solving theory
/.Motivations for change in problem solving approach - Answer--Disequilibrium between
what is and what the client wants
-conscious desire to achieve change
-positive expectations based on new life possibilities
-the strength of a supportive relationship and positive expectation of the worker
/.4 P's of basic elements involved in treatment - Answer-a person has a problem, comes
to a place for help given through a process
/.Crisis Intervention Assessment - Answer--exploration of the stress- producing event or
situation and individual's response to it, as well as response the crises in the recent past
-Characteristics signs and phases, patterns of adaption and maladaption to crisis
-necessity for quick action stimulates a highly forces assessment that emphasizes
current state of functioning and internal and environmental supports and deficits
, /.Important social workers associated with crisis intervention - Answer-Lydia Rapoport,
Howard Parad, Rosemary Lukton
/.Behavioral treatment planning - Answer--Priority problems are selected and their
maintain conditions are identified.
-The client is engaged in establishing targets for change.
-Baseline data are established about frequency of the behavior
-A written or an oral contract is developed
/.Important social workers associated with behavior modification - Answer-Edwin
Thomas and Joel Fisher
/.Treatment planning for Cognitive theory - Answer--Establish baseline data: The client's
negative automatic thoughts ("I'm such a loser"), distortions ("he must be thinking how
stupid I am") and dysfunctional beliefs ("I have to be perfect at what I do")
-Establish target goals for change and alternative ways of thinking
-Agree to contact for goals, homework, time frame
/.Boundary - Answer-the means of organization by which the parts of a system can be
differeientated from the environment in which the system exists and which differentiates
subsystems from one another.
/.Subsystem - Answer-a subset of the whole system
/.Entropy - Answer-The randomness, disorder or chaos in a system
/.Homeostasis - Answer-a system will make changes or adjustments to maintain an
accustomed balance.
/.Structural family therapy - Answer-(Salvador Minuchin) strengthening boundaries
around the family subsystems when enmeshed or increasing flexibility when overly rigid
/.Strategic Family Therapy - Answer-(Jay Haley and Chole Madanes) asks what
function does the symptom serve i the family? that is , what payoff is there both to the
system for continuing the symptom? Problem-focused behavioral change. Emphasizes
parental power and hierarchical family relationships.
/.Don Jackson - Answer-known for his focus on power relationships and his theory of
"double bind" communication in families (i.e. two conflicting sets of messages
communicated at the same time that create or perpetuate a no-win pathological system
/.Murray Bowen Family systems theory - Answer-Focused on:
-role of thinking vs. feeling in relationship systems
-role of emotional triangles
family issues that reappear over several generations, family projection process in which
parents transmit their emotional problems to a child
