Historical Controversies
Initially, applied behavior analysis used aversives such as shouting and slaps to reduce unwanted behaviors. Ethical opposition to such aversive practices caused them to fall out of favor and has stimulated development of less aversive methods. In general, aversion therapy and punishment are now less frequently used as ABA treatments due to legal restrictions. However, procedures such as odor aversion, covert sensitization and other covert conditioning procedures, based on punishment or aversion strategies, are still used effectively in the treatment of pedophiles. In addition, with some populations such as conduct disorder in children there is considerable evidence that has developed to show that all positive programs can produce change but that children will not enter into the normal range without punishment procedures. These programs have shifted to using child time-out and response–cost procedures to ensure that clients rights to effective interventions are met.
Read more about this topic: Professional Practice Of Behavior Analysis
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“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)