What’s the Function: Tangible

We've covered an overview of the importance of determining functions of behavior and have looked closely at attention-maintained and escape-maintained behavior. Today, we're diving into the world of tangible as a function of behavior.

Ah, tangible-maintained behavior. This one is a pretty common function for some of our younger guys. You may have dealt with this with your own children (think back to those lovely Saturday mornings that ended with a sibling getting punch so their brother could be in charge of the remote). 

As I mentioned in my post on attention as a function of behavior, some practitioners do not separate tangible and attention-maintained behavior. They both function to gain something (in one regard social attention, in another, access to something). Often the interventions will look similar (functional communication training to request, extinction - deny access vs. planned ignoring are similar programs). But for the purposes of this post, I choose to separate the two functions of behavior.

What is Tangible-Maintained Behavior?

Tangible-Maintained behavior functions to gain access to something, whether it be a tangible item such as a toy or food, or an activity such as community outing, or TV watching. Again, think back to your childhood, or when your kids were growing up. Did you ever see a child bite another one, then grab the toy from their hand as they were crying? Likely maintained by gain access to the toy. Another example is seeing a parent and child at the store. The kid is pitching a fit in line, screaming about wanting candy. Try as he might, the parent cannot get their child to calm down and eventually agrees to getting the candy (usually contingent upon the kid "calming down"). Again - tangible-maintained! It's easy to see how tangible-maintained behavior persists.

How Do I Know if a Behavior is Tangible-Maintained?

DATA! Have I echoed that enough yet? Check your data, particularly your ABC data. If you are seeing patterns in the consequences for engaging in a problem behavior, note what the learner is getting (getting as in reinforcement). If you see a pattern with the individual getting to hog the math manipulatives, you may hypothesize it as being maintained by gaining access/tangible.

Because this function can look similar to attention, be careful and scrutinize your data. Maybe the learner is getting access to the toys, but also the para that's working at that station. If you suspect it may be tangible but you aren't sure because of the social component, tease those apart by manipulating the environment to see the effects on having the para not available at that station. It's all about the assessment!

ABA at Play: functions of behavior, tangible-maintained behavior, reinforcement, behavioral contingencies, data collection, multiply maintained behaviors

What are some examples you see in your life that may be tangible-maintained behaviors? What brings you to this hypothesis?