The Behaviour That Gets What It Wants: Understanding Attention and Tangible Functions
- Lari Kharkongor
- May 7
- 8 min read
Blog #14 | When Behaviour Speaks Louder Than Words Series
TL:DR
Attention and tangible-maintained behaviours follow a simple logic: it works. A child who learns that screaming gets them a donut, or that escalating gets them a preferred adult's focus, will escalate again. The intervention is not punishment, it is stopping the reinforcement cycle. Use the child's motivations in your favour: first work, then iPad. Make limits concrete with tokens or visuals. Hold the line - consistently, and as a team. The behaviour will only change when it stops paying out.
In a supermarket, a child wants candy, cereal or a toy. The parent says no.
The child escalates. First a whine, then crying, then a full meltdown in the supermarket aisle.
The parent feels it immediately: the eyes, the glances, the silent judgment. And to stop it - to stop the behaviour, to stop the stares. They give in.
I’m not here to judge the parent. In some shape or form, this has happened to experienced teachers, skilled support staff and myself included. The pressure in that moment is real.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
When we give in, we teach that the behaviour works.
This post explores the final two functions of the SEAT framework: Attention and Tangible.
These behaviours aren’t driven by sensory needs or escape. They’re driven by wanting something - your attention, or access to a preferred item.
And when those behaviours pay off, they don’t fade. They grow.
OVERVIEW
This is the fourth post in the When Behaviour Speaks Louder Than Words series, exploring the SEAT framework: Sensory, Escape, Attention, Tangible.
In earlier posts, we looked at behaviour driven by sensory needs and the need to escape demands. Here, we focus on the final two functions: behaviours used to gain access to people or things.
These are not malicious strategies.
Children, especially those with limited language, delayed executive functioning, or underdeveloped self-regulation use the tools they have. If a behaviour reliably produces what they want, they will use it again.
And again.
Each time the behaviour works, it becomes more entrenched and harder to change.
In this post, I’ll walk through:
What attention- and tangible-maintained behaviours look like
Real examples from practice
Strategies that actually work.
And what it costs when we don’t hold the line
PART 1: ATTENTION
When the Goal Is You
Attention-maintained behaviour is exactly what it sounds like: behaviour that reliably produces a response from others.
And that response doesn’t have to be positive. A reprimand counts. A sigh counts. A worried look counts.
It is still attention. It is still connection. It still works.
I worked with a student who exhibited self-injurious behaviour. Following an outburst, he would hit his head with his hands or on the floor. Over time, we noticed something important:
The behaviour stopped the moment adult attention stopped.
When staff stepped back and disengaged, the behaviour extinguished.
This wasn’t about pain or sensory input. It was a highly effective form of communication - Look at me.
A word of caution: I am not advocating for ignoring self-injurious behaviour. It is dangerous to the safety of both the child and the adults around them. I had an experienced and skilled team, and we were able to connect the dots and respond the way we did.
Self-injurious behaviour deserves its own post entirely, but in short: not all self-injurious behaviour is attention-seeking. At one of the schools I worked at, there was a case of a five-year-old whose self-injurious behaviour was so severe he had to be transferred to a more restrictive setting. The function matters enormously before you decide how to respond.
The key point is this:
If attention is driving the behaviour, then attention - even negative attention - feeds it
What attention-maintained behaviour can look like
Calling out repeatedly during instruction
Disrupting group activities
Refusing to transition until a specific adult intervenes
Self-injurious behaviour that stops when adult engagement stops
Crying, tantruming, or escalating when ignored
A classroom story: Be the adult and hold your ground
I had a student who became very attached to my teaching assistant, to the point where he refused to work with me. During station rotations, this became a real problem. He would become disruptive when asked to move to my table, crying and refusing to leave his seat.
The behaviour was safe to ignore. He wasn’t harming himself or others.
I continued working with the other students. Then, after a while I noticed the crying shifted. He started fidgeting with his feet, with his shoelaces. This told me he was coming down from the peak of it.
I approached him calmly and asked, “Ready?” He nodded and I repeated the instruction again- first Ms. Lari's table, then Ms. preferred adult's table. That was it. No negotiation, no reassurance, no drawn-out explanation.
He made his way to my station. He did one small task. And I said: Good listening, all done - now, Ms. preferred adult's table.
The next day was easier.
And the day after that was easier still.
If I had given in on day one and returned him to his preferred adult, the behaviour would have had proof that escalation works.
Empty threats create inconsistency. Consistent follow-through builds trust.
PART 2: TANGIBLE
When the Goal Is a Thing
Tangible-maintained behaviour is driven by access to preferred items, food, activities, or privileges. Through experience, through reinforcement history, the child has learned that certain behaviours reliably produce access to what they want. And so those behaviours become the go-to strategy.
What I have observed across many years of practice is that children will escalate their tactics until they find the one that works. Crying, then screaming, then explosive outbursts, and then for some, self-injurious behaviour. Children will cycle through increasingly intense strategies until something pays out. And if it pays out at the point of the most intense behaviour, that is the behaviour that gets locked in.
So, why does this happen?
Well, the contributing factors are real and worth naming: limited language skills, limited self-regulation skills, delayed executive functioning skills, underdeveloped waiting skills, and for many of our students, a genuine neurological difficulty in tolerating delayed gratification.
This is not wilfulness. But understanding the cause does not change the intervention:
We still have to break the reinforcement cycle.
Three stories that stayed with me
The first is the donut. A parent told me that what began as an occasional morning treat became a daily demand. Her child, now morbidly obese for his age, would refuse to get on the school bus without a sugary donut. What started as a kind gesture had through consistent reinforcement become the only key that unlocked cooperation or else an explosive outburst that was very difficult to contain.
Unlearning that pattern is extraordinarily difficult.
The second: a student in my class who wanted more snacks than his classmates were given. Every single day without fail, if he did not get extra, an explosive outburst was waiting.
The behaviour was reliable, targeted, and escalating.
The third: a student who, unless he had access to an iPad, would spiral into a complete meltdown. And yet, the moment the iPad appeared, he became calm.
That instant recovery is one of the clearest markers of tangible-maintained behaviour.
The distress was real, but it was also functional. It was doing a job.
What actually helped
My teaching assistant introduced a token system. She gave every student in the class two tokens at the start of snack time, with a clear explanation: two tokens can be exchanged for snacks. No tokens, no snack.
She could have addressed this quietly, one-to-one, with just the student who was struggling. But the power of the intervention came from making it visible. This student watched his peers use their two tokens and then stop asking.
He saw that the limit was not personal, not arbitrary, not negotiable, it was structural we did not have extra snacks. When he ran out of tokens and asked for more, she simply said: do you have more tokens? He did not. And though reluctantly, he accepted it.
It is not just about telling a child there are only two snacks left. He did not care for that explanation. But when the limit became concrete, something he could hold in his hand - it became real.
Tokens, visual schedules, choice boards, and first-then structures work because they make abstract expectations tangible. They shift the limit from 'because I said so' to something the child can see and reason about, even at a concrete cognitive level.
For the iPad student, I used the behaviour function in my favour. I knew he wanted the iPad. So I made it the reward. First work, then iPad. That was the deal.
Day one: he refused. He cried. The iPad time came and went, and I did not give it to him. That was a hard moment — it always is. But I held the line.
Day two: he did what he was asked to do. He connected the consequence. And he got his iPad.
This isn’t cruelty.
It’s teaching that access is earned - not demanded.
And that structure, even when resisted, creates predictability and safety.
STRATEGIES
What to Do and What Not to Do
First: do not correct the child in the middle of the storm
When a behaviour is at its peak - screaming, hitting, full meltdown - that is not the moment for teaching. Your goal in that moment is safety and waiting. Do not negotiate, do not explain, do not try to reason. If the behaviour is safe to ignore, ignore it. Give it nothing to feed on.
The teaching happens before and after, not during.
If you give in once, know what you are doing
Sometimes you will give in. Sometimes the context demands it - in public, when other children are at risk, when you are exhausted and under-resourced. That happens. But do it with your eyes open. When you give in, you are making a deposit into the reinforcement account for that behaviour. The next episode will likely be harder.
Use the function in your favour
If you know a child is motivated by a particular person, item, or activity - use it. Preferred access becomes the most powerful reinforcer you have. First work, then preferred activity. First transition, then time with preferred adult. This is not bribing the child. This is using what you know about them to build a predictable structure that works.
Make expectations concrete and consistent
Token systems, visual schedules, first-then boards, and social stories all serve the same function: they make your expectations visible, predictable, and not personal. The child is not fighting you, they are working within a structure. That distinction matters enormously, both for the child's experience and for yours.
Align your team
One of the most damaging things that can happen with attention or tangible-maintained behaviour is inconsistency across staff. If one adult holds the line and another gives in, the behaviour learns exactly who to target and when. Staff agreement on a common language, a shared plan is not optional. It is the intervention.
YOUR STORY
Reflect on Your Own Practice
Think about a student or child whose behaviour reliably produces a specific outcome - your attention, or access to something they want. Ask yourself honestly: is that outcome being given before the behaviour escalates, or after? What are you inadvertently teaching through the timing of your response?
You do not have to have held the line perfectly to understand this. Most of us have given in at some point. The value is not in the guilt, it is in the awareness.
ONE TAKEAWAY
The Behaviour Is Working. That Is the Problem.
Attention-maintained and tangible-maintained behaviours are not irrational. They are perfectly logical responses to patterns that have been reinforced over time. They have learned that certain behaviours produce reliable results.
Your job is not to eliminate the child's desire for connection or for preferred things. Those are human needs. Your job is to change the path they take to get there and to stop rewarding the path that causes harm.
Hold the line. Consistently for both yourself and the child.
BRIDGE TO POST 5
Next week, we bring the full SEAT framework together. We look at what happens when behaviours serve multiple functions, when the picture is genuinely complex, and what it means to hold the uncertainty of cases that were never fully resolved and to keep showing up anyway.
See you Thursday!
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied behavior analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson.
Iwata, B. A., Dorsey, M. F., Slifer, K. J., Bauman, K. E., & Richman, G. S. (1994). Toward a functional analysis of self-injury. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(2), 197–209. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1994.27-197
Kazdin, A. E. (2012). Behavior modification in applied settings (7th ed.). Waveland Press.
Volkmar, F. R., & Wiesner, L. A. (2009). A practical guide to autism: What every parent, family member, and teacher needs to know. Wiley.
Comments