The aversive nature of gentle teaching

The proponents of gentle teaching have undertaken a sustained attack on the aversive nature of procedures used in applied behavior analysis and this attack was recently updated in an article (McGee, 1992) which suggested similarities between methods of torture and methods of applied behavior analysis. The relativity and contextual nature of aversiveness is discussed using examples from the gentle teaching literature itself and it is concluded that any intervention, be it contingent electric shock or “unconditional valuing,” can be regarded as aversive depending on the function of the problem behavior and specific circumstances surrounding the treatment administration.