I love the saying that goes "The moment you think the child least deserves a cuddle is the moment the child most needs it". I think this applies in those moments when we have been conditioned to think "He wants attention, so he's not going to get it; ignore the 'bad behaviour'".
The way I see it, and this is consistent with my experience and the outcomes I achieve from this thinking, when the child is 'acting out', we've missed some signs prior to this point that told us we needed to pay attention to something the child needed - usually some emotional attention. Let's face it, when ADULTS miss out on emotional attention there is some behavioural fallout later down the track! How do you feel when you are emotionally neglected by a partner/husband? If you told him that you wanted more time with him, or wanted a hug and he told you that just because you wanted it you weren't going to get it, and he told you this often enough, you would start to question why he thought you didn't deserve it. You would start wondering what hoops you had to jump in order to get that emotional nourishment. This is where a lot of women start buying sexy underwear, cooking creative meals, getting their hair done, thinking of lots of ways to elicit the love they want, and end up filling that gap with other 'behaviours', like over-spending on clothes, overeating (most common!), spending more time on the internet, drinking alcohol etc. They come to believe that the love they get from their partners is conditional, and some start to think of themselves as less worthy of love.
Anyway, if many adults are susceptible to this, how is a child going to process the idea that if they need some attention that isn't a good enough reason to get attention? Answer: they can't. They don't process it well at all, and will 'act out' to get attention. Instead of being punished (however you do it - time out, chair, ignoring), the cause of their attention-seeking behaviour is best sought and acknowledged so that everyone feels valued and the child will learn they don't need to go to certain lengths to get your attention
I fail to see the logic in withholding attention when a child is asking for it. What I see is the teaching of children to set up maladaptive communications for loving relationships, and the cycle continues into adult relationships, much like the one I described above, sometimes worse, sometimes better. It makes attention-giving conditional upon how much you feel like investing the emotional energy into that person, rather than on nourishing that person's spirit and making the relationship much more like its potential than a template of relationships of the past.
I think we all deserve better than we are taught to give