Aversives

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Aversives are unpleasant stimuli which induce changes in behavior through punishment; by applying an aversive immediately following a behavior, the likelyhood of the behavior occurring in the future is reduced. Aversives can vary from being slightly unpleasant or irritating (such as a disliked color) to physically damaging (such as an electric shock). It is not the level of unpleasantness, but rather the effectiveness the unpleasant event has on changing behavior that defines the aversive.

Contents

Main article: Classical conditioning

There are two types of aversive stimuli:

Unconditioned aversive stimuli naturally result in pain or discomfort and are often associated with biologically harmful or damaging substances or events. Examples include extreme heat or cold, bitter flavors, electric shocks, loud noises and pain. Aversives can be applied naturally (such as touching a hot stove) or in a contrived manner (such as during torture or behavior modification).

A conditioned aversive stimulus is an initially neutral stimulus that becomes aversive after repeated pairing with an unconditioned aversive stimulus. This type of stimulus would include consequences such as verbal warnings, gestures or even the sight of an individual who is disliked.

Main article: Operant conditioning
Main article: Ethical challenges to autism treatment

Aversives can be used as punishment during applied behavior analysis with autistic children to reduce unwanted behavior such as stimming or self-injury. Aversive stimuli may also be used as negative reinforcement to increase the rate or probability of a behavior when it is removed. Early iterations of the Lovaas technique incorporated significant amounts of aversives during therapy,[1] though the use of aversives in ABA was not without controversey.[2] Contemporary uses of ABA therapy rely on aversives in limited cases, such as when a behavior is dangerous or the reinforcement contingencies that support a behavior are unknown.[3]

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