Step right up, and take a SEAT! Today I’m going to tell you a little about the functions of behavior. Last time I told you a little about reinforcement. Reinforcement is what makes your child’s behavior more likely to happen again in the future. It’s a consequence of behavior (remember the ABC’s of ABA?). The function of behavior is simply what type of reinforcement your child is getting. There are four functions of behavior and yes, I have an acronym to help you remember them! To remember the four functions of behavior you need to take a SEAT and think about what’s happening immediately after your child’s behavior. Is it:

Sensory- Sensory simply means the behavior feels good. We may not necessarily understand how or why, but to your child it is rewarding. Behaviors that have a sensory function are often things like hand flapping, rocking the body back and forth, repeating words or sounds repetitively and continuously (also known as scripting or echolalia), pinching or biting oneself/others, etc.  

Escape- Escape means that the behavior allows your child to get out of doing something they don’t want to do. Maybe your child does not like to color. So, every time you have your child sit down to color a picture, he/she screams and cries until he/she is allowed to stop coloring and go play instead. Sometimes, engaging in the behavior allows him/her to avoid coloring all together. For example, as soon as you say “let’s color” your child starts screaming and crying. So, to help him/her calm down you say “it’s ok, we don’t have to color! Let’s play with your cars instead!”. Now he/she doesn’t even have to get near the coloring supplies and gets to play instead.

Attention- Attention means just that. The behavior allows your child to get your attention. For example, say you’re on the phone and your child starts screaming your name repeatedly. Finally, you turn to your child and say, “I am on the phone. Please stop screaming so I can hear.”. But, your child keeps screaming. So you ask again, but the screaming continues. Finally, not knowing what else to do, you get off of the phone so that he/she will stop screaming. Attention can be very tricky, though! Sometimes you may scold your child thinking it will  be a type of punishment and stop the behavior. However, if attention is the function then, even if you’re angry, your child is still getting attention from you. Therefore, the behavior is actually more likely to happen again.

Tangible- Tangible means they get to have an item they want. Remember the candy example from the post about the ABC’s of ABA? Well, the function of behavior there was tangible. The child wanted a Reese’s Cup and they got it! Tangbiles can be things like toys, activities, food, etc.

Now that you know the four functions of behavior, it’s time to talk about reinforcement one more time. There are two types of reinforcement, positive and negative. Next time I’ll wrap up my talk about reinforcement with what positive and negative reinforcement is and how they relate to the functions of behavior.