[3][4][non-primary source needed] ABAI has honored Robert A. Sherman for his legal defense of the JRC's use of aversive punishments on its students.

[5][better source needed][6] In 2022, ABAI's membership voted to support a position that strongly opposed contingent electric skin shock.

[16] Finally, ABAI serves its members by providing an organizational structure through which scientists and practitioners—both within and related to the discipline—can share and disseminate knowledge.

[29] The Judge Rotenberg Center has attended some ABAI conferences to promote their organization, which has been condemned by the United Nations as having used methods which have been classified as torture.

As of 2022,[update] they offer 5 awards: One activist group, Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), has published critical blog posts about The Association for Behavior Analysis International, suggesting that it provides a platform for the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), a controversial school which uses aversives.

[46][4] Specifically, the ASAN president Ari Ne'eman reviewed two books for Vox in which he criticized both the Autism Society of America and ABAI for not prohibiting the employees of JRC to submit presentations while it was concurrently under investigation from the Food and Drug Administration, the United States Department of Justice, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

[5][better source needed] According to the ASAN, ABAI has endorsed the Judge Rotenberg Center's use of the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, an aversive device that administers painful electric shocks and has been condemned by the United Nations as torture, by allowing them to present at their annual conferences.

[46][4] The Therapist Neurodiversity Collective made a statement about ABAI's connection to the JRC: "We are appalled and horrified that the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) chooses to condone painful electric shock aversion therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center, which the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has condemned.