Packet #40

Using strategic planning, reasoning, and cognitive flexibility, your client must try to decipher how to arrive at a given solution using the given numbers, given operators, as well as the results of their steps to arrive at a specific solution. This exercise highly targets executive functioning, but also targets working memory by way of requiring your client to remember which numbers and operators they have used and keep track of unsuccessful attempts so as to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Your client must develop and implement strategies for effective planning while also practicing how to effectively solve problems using some degree of trial and error.

This exercise is designed to target executive functioning – specifically planning and inhibition. Your client must learn to examine a set of information available to them, the problem at hand, and create a mental plan of how they will attempt to solve it. Rushed or unplanned actions will cause your client to not solve the problem efficiently. This exercise carries over to daily life skills such as booking appointments, taking inventory of needed groceries and household goods to not buy items already in stock, and remembering the steps needed to get out of an assisted moving device such as a wheelchair without falling.

Looking at the configuration of basketballs, your clients will have to mentally manipulate the basketballs into the correct hoops in as few moves as possible. Working memory and planning are challenged in this exercise, as clients must view the desired configuration and plan the most effective way to reach it. This exercise also helps with inhibition, as unplanned actions can cause more steps needed to solve the problem.