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Alfred Binet

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Alfred Binet
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(born July 8, 1857, Nice, France — died Oct. 18, 1911, Paris) French psychologist. His interest in Jean-Martin Charcot's work on hypnosis prompted him to abandon a law career and study medicine at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (1878 – 91). He served as director of a research laboratory at the Sorbonne (1895 – 1911). A major figure in the development of experimental psychology in France, he founded L'Année Psychologique, the first French journal on psychology, in 1895. He developed experimental techniques to measure reasoning ability; between 1905 and 1911 he and Theodore Simon developed influential scales for the measurement of intelligence of children. His works include Experimental Study of Intelligence (1903) and A Method of Measuring the Development of the Intelligence of Young Children (1915).

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Biography: Alfred Binet
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The French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) was the founder of French experimental psychology. He devised tests for measuring intelligence that have been widely used in schools.

Alfred Binet was born in Nice on July 11, 1857. He studied law and medicine in Paris and then obtained a doctorate in natural science. He became interested in hysteria and hypnosis and frequented Jean Martin Charcot's neurological clinic at the Sâlpétrière Hospital. During this time Binet wrote La Psychologie du raisonnement (1886; The Psychology of Reasoning), Le Magnétisme animal (1887; Animal Magnetism), and On Double Consciousness (1889).

In 1891 Binet joined the Laboratory of physiological Psychology of the École Pratique des Hautes Études; the following year he became assistant director and in 1895 director. He held this post for the rest of his life. In 1895 he founded the experimental journal L'Année psychologique, in which he published articles on emotion, memory, attention, and problem solving - articles which contained a considerable number of methodological innovations.

Although trained in abnormal psychology, Binet never ceased to be interested in the psychology of intelligence and individual differences. After publishing Les Altérations de la personnalité (1892; The Alterations of the Personality) with C. Féré, Binet studied complex calculators, chess players, and literary creativity by the survey method. In 1900 he also became interested in suggestibility, a normal continuation of his work on hysteria.

Binet's major interest, however, was the development of intelligence, and in 1899 he established a laboratory at the École de la Rue de la Grange aux Belles. Here he devised a series of tests to study intellectual development in his daughters Armande and Marguerite. His wellknown work, L'Étude expérimentale de I'intelligence (1903; The Experimental Study of Intelligence), in which he showed that there could be imageless thought, was based on these studies with his daughters.

Two years later, in response to the request of the minister of public instruction to find a means for enabling learning disabled children to benefit from some kind of schooling, Binet, in collaboration with Théodore Simon, created "new methods for the diagnosis of retarded children's mental level," which were partly based on his earlier work. His scale for measuring intelligence was widely adopted. In 1908 the American psychologist Lewis M. Terman revised it (Stanford Revision). Binet himself improved his test in 1908 and 1911. He also continued to be interested in psychological applications to pedagogical problems: Les Enfants anormaux (1907; Abnormal Children), written with Simon; and Less Idées modernes sur les enfants (1909; Modern Ideas on Children). Binet died on Oct. 8, 1911.

Further Reading

Several of Binet's papers are collected and translated in R.H. Pollack, ed., The Experimental Psychology of Alfred Binet: Selected Papers (1969), which included a complete bibliography of Binet's work, indicating those papers which are translated into English. Edith J. Varon, The Development of Alfred Binet's Psychology (1935), appeared as vol. 46 of Psychological Monographs, edited by Joseph Peterson. The best texts on the history of psychology, such as G. A. Miller, Psychology: The Science of Mental Life (1962), discuss the contributions of Binet. the E

Additional Sources

Wolf, Theta Holmes, Alfred Binet, Chicago, University of Chicago Press 1973.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Alfred Binet
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Binet, Alfred (älfrĕd' bēnā'), 1857-1911, French psychologist. From 1894 he was director of the psychology laboratory at the Sorbonne. He is known for his research and innovation in testing human intelligence. With Théodore Simon he devised (1905-11) a series of tests that, with revisions, came into wide use in schools, industries, and the army. The Stanford, the Herring, and the Kuhlmann are important revisions. Binet and Simon wrote Les Enfants anormaux (1907, tr. Mentally Defective Children, 1914). Most of his writings were published in Année psychologique, a journal that he founded in 1895.

Bibliography

See study by T. H. Wolf (1973).

Education Encyclopedia: Alfred Binet
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(1857–1911)

Best known for his development with Théodore Simon of the first standardized intelligence test, Alfred Binet can be considered one of the few "renaissance" psychologists of the twentieth century. His research included the measurement of individual differences in reaction times, association of auditory times with specific colors, auditory and visual imagery, and children's memory capabilities. In his early research, Binet also investigated children's fears. Using questionnaires, he studied creative artists of his time, such as Alexandre Dumas, in an attempt to provide insight into their methods of work and the sources of their creativity. As Theta Wolf notes, Binet also was known for his severe criticism of the methods of experimental psychology for its "sterile laboratory conditions" (pp. 90 - 91). His work on individual differences described in a 1896 article with Victor Henri initiated his work on measuring individual differences and took into account both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of individuals' responses. Binet was also a leader in providing programs for children with mental disabilities and establishing a pedagogical institute to provide appropriate instructional methods.

Background

Binet's choice of a career as a psychologist matured outside of any formal educational study. He first entered law school earning his license at age twenty-one and then began study for the doctorate. However, he lost interest in that field and began medical studies, but did not complete them. Soon after, he began reading books in psychology. For the next six years he worked in the laboratory of Jean-Martin Charcot, a well-known neurologist, with mental patients and also developed an interest in hypnosis. At age thirty Binet completed a paper that stressed the importance of studying the normal individual before studying persons with serious emotional problems. The paper, which received a substantial monetary award from the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, was cited for the demonstration of Binet's competence as an observer and his knowledge of the experimental method. The award committee concluded that Binet had a "gifted and uncommon mind" (Wolf, p. 6).

Research

In 1890 Binet published papers that dealt with the observational study of his two daughters. Wolf suggests that these studies preceded those of Piaget's and possibly influenced Piaget in his research. Between 1888 and 1894 Binet studied in his father-in-law's laboratory at the College de France and took courses in botany and zoology. Wolf also noted that he became interested in comparative psychology, and researched the behavior and physiology of insects, earning a doctorate in 1894.

At the same time Binet and Henri Beaumis began the first French psychological journal. In 1894 Binet published four original papers, eighty-five reviews, and was appointed to the board of associates of the American Psychological Review. He also published two books: one on experimental psychology and other "on the psychology of master calculators and chess players" (Wolf, p. 9).

Binet's wide range of interests in a number of different academic areas was demonstrated by his authorship of several articles for biology journals and his review of research findings from the field of histology, anatomy, and physiology. In 1895 Binet was invited to give a series of lectures at the University of Bucharest. Though offered a professorship, Binet declined the appointment to return to Paris. Although Binet was now considered to be the "fore-most, if not the only French experimental psychologist," he never received an appointment at a French institution of higher learning (Wolf, p. 22). Raymond Fancher believes this was due in part to Binet's lack of official credentials resulting from his self-trained status and lack of personal support from his instructors.

Measurement of Children's Abilities

In the 1890s, Binet became associated with Théodore Simon, who had earned a medical degree and was an intern at an institution for retarded children. He became Binet's collaborator in the development of the first intelligence scale.

In 1899 Binet was invited to become a member of the new Society for the Study of the Child because of his interest in children's intellectual development. Wolf mentions that under Binet's leadership, members of the society aggressively pushed the French Ministry of Instruction to offer suitable instructional programs for children with mental disabilities. Binet's leadership also led to an appointment to a government commission to study the needs of these children in the public schools. He became convinced of the need to ascertain how to differentiate children with learning problems from those who could not learn adequately.

Wolf considers that Binet's greatest productivity was between 1901 to 1911. After his appointment to the government commission on the retarded in 1904, Binet noted that educational officials were primarily interested in administrative problems of the schools. There was no interest in how to differentiate objectively retarded children from normal children or to provide appropriate instruction for them. In 1905 Binet and his colleagues recommended special classes and schools for the retarded, which up to that time did not exist. A bill for such provisions was introduced in 1907 and in 1909 a law passed establishing classes for educational improvement. Binet and Simon were provided the criteria for entry and aided in the selection of students for the first special classes in the Paris schools. In 1905 Binet along with Simon published the first standardized scale of intelligence for which he is best known. The scale was composed of thirty items and was the product of more than fifteen years of careful investigations and experimental research with children. Subsequent revisions of the scale appeared in 1908 and 1911. A number of these items are still included in the latest (1960 and 1986) revisions of their test. During this period Binet also helped to establish the first pedagogical laboratory in France. Wolf noted that in the same time period he worked on the psychology of court testimony and, in 1909, published a popular book for teachers and parents about children, which contained many of his ideas about intelligence. In 1906 Binet and Simon published a paper that addressed "new methods for diagnosing idiocy, imbecility, and moronity," an important contribution because, for the first time, criteria were specified that allowed professionals to agree on different levels of retardation (Wolf, pp. 142 - 143).

Contribution

Alfred Binet remains an important figure in modern psychology. He was among the first to emphasize that no child suspected of retardation should be removed from the regular classroom without undergoing a psychological and medical assessment that would help confirm the retardation. Binet and Simon emphasized that diagnostic errors could be due to lack of "attitude" on the part of the examiner; variability in the meaning of the terms used, or lack of precision in the examination of the child.

Binet and Simon stated that test items used in assessment of children needed to be graded in difficulty and be age appropriate. In their discussion of new methods for the diagnosis of retarded children, Binet and Simon emphasized the properties inherent in the assessment of intelligence. These included the need to separate natural intelligence from lack of performance due to inadequate instruction. Attempting to reduce the effects of instruction, Binet and Simon did not require the child to read or write any material. For them the heart of the meaning of intelligence was judgment, to comprehend well, and to reason well.

Binet's sophisticated comments written in 1911 on how to proceed with an examination of the child could easily be repeated word-for-word for early-twenty-first-century psychology students. He stressed the importance of the observation of children and their activities, and outlined with Simon the normal development of intelligence in children from three to twelve years of age in an article published in 1916 (b). These comments were the result of detailed presentation of many test items and careful observations of the responses of the subjects. This article also contained a revision of the 1905 scale. Their monograph could also be read in the early twenty-first century by psychologists for its observational insights in the assessment of children's abilities. Binet and Simon's discussion of the different attitudes and motivations of school personnel concerning retarded children also remains relevant. The intelligence scale of 1908 was changed from one that assessed lack of intelligence into one that classified the intelligence of the retarded, the normal child, and those of superior intelligence. Of the thirty items that composed the 1905 scale, Binet and Simon retained only fourteen without any change.

Binet established the Laboratory of Experimental Pedagogy in Paris in 1905, the first such laboratory established in a school in Europe. The purpose of the laboratory was to provide a continuing source for experimental work with children and provide consultative help to teachers who wished to teach retarded children. Because of the work in these areas of psychology and education Binet can be considered the first school psychologist in the Western world.

One result of this lab-school collaboration was a study by Binet and Simon that focused on vision problems of school children. They noted that children might be labeled slow only because of difficulty in seeing the blackboard. Their concern resulted in the development of a standardized test of vision that teachers could use without the involvement of physicians. Binet was also interested in criteria for a good school, evaluation of teacher competence, the influence of environmental factors on intelligence, such as socioeconomic status, and the provision of classes for those of superior intelligence.

Bibliography

Binet, Alfred. 1916. "New Investigations upon the Measure of the Intellectual Level among School Children" (1911). In The Development of Intelligence in Children. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.

Binet, Alfred, and Simon, THÉODORE. 1916a. "Applications of the New Methods to the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level among Normal and Subnormal Children in Institutions and in Primary Schools" (1908). In The Development of Intelligence in Children, ed. Henry H. Goddard. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.

Binet, Alfred, and Simon, THÉODORE. 1916b. "The Development of Intelligence in the Child"(1908). In The Development of Intelligence in Children. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.

Binet, Alfred, and Simon, THÉODORE. 1916c. "New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals" (1905). In The Development of Intelligence in Children, ed. Henry H. Goddard. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.

Fancher, Raymond E. 1998. "Alfred Binet, General Psychologist." In Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. Vol. 3, ed. Gregory A. Kimble and Michael Wertheimer. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Wolf, Theta H. 1973. Alfred Binet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

— GILBERT R. GREDLER

World of the Mind: Alfred Binet
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(1857–1911). French psychologist, born at Nice. He became director of the department of physiological psychology at the Sorbonne in 1892. With Theodore Simon, he was responsible for the design and standardization of the first formal intelligence tests — the 'Binet scale' — originally devised at the request of the French government in order to establish which children were or were not worthy to benefit from education.

He instigated the concept of intelligence quotient (IQ), i.e. chronological age divided by mental age, multiplied by 100, which has been widely used ever since to 'measure' the intelligence of children and, in somewhat modified form, that of adults too. Indeed, the notion that individuals are born with all potential ability assessed along a single continuum is widely regarded as one of the most notable achievements of modern psychology; and yet it may be both conceptually and socially misguided and has led to race and sex rivalries. In spite of extensive research, it still remains unclear how far the IQ score represents actual ability and whether it is genuinely predictive of intellectual accomplishment. At all events, the recent tendency is to interpret the results of intelligence tests only with extreme caution.

Binet's most important book was L'Étude experimentale de l'intelligence (1903). But he also wrote books on many other psychological subjects, including hypnosis and suggestibility, and the psychic life of micro-organisms.

(Published 1987)

— O. L. Zangwill


Wikipedia: Alfred Binet
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Alfred Binet

Alfred Binet
Born July 11, 1857 (1857-07-11)
Nice
Died October 18, 1911 (1911-10-19)
Nationality Flag of France.svg France
Fields Psychology

Alfred Binet (July 11, 1857 – October 18, 1911), French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, known at that time as Binet test basically today called IQ test. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum. Along with his collaborator Théodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his intelligence scale in 1908 and 1911, the last appearing just before his untimely death. A further refinement of the Binet-Simon scale was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman, from Stanford University, who incorporated William Stern's proposal that an individual's intelligence level be measured as an (I.Q.). Terman's test, which he named the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale formed the basis for one of the modern intelligence tests still commonly used today. They are all colloquially known as IQ tests.

Contents

Early Years

Binet was born as Alfredo Binetti in Nice, at the time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He was the only child of a physician father and an artist mother. His parents separated when he was young, and Binet then moved to Paris with his mother. He attended law school, and earned his degree in 1878. He planned on going to medical school, but decided that his interest in psychology was more important.

Reading books by Charles Darwin, Alexander Bain and others, Binet became a somewhat self-taught psychologist. Introverted and a loner, this self-educating suited him. What he did not realize was that he would later pay, because of what he was deprived of by not attending a University and formally studying psychology.

Binet published the first modern intelligence test, the Binet-Simon intelligence scale, in 1905.

Binet and Chess

In 1894, Binet conducted one of the first psychological studies into chess. It investigated the cognitive facilities of chess masters. Binet hypothesized that chess depends upon the phenomenological qualities of visual memory but after studying the reports by master participants, it was concluded that memory was only part of the chain of cognition involved in the game process. The players were blindfolded and required to play the game from memory. It was found that only masters were able to play successfully without seeing the board for a second time and that amateur or intermediate players found it to be an impossible task. It was further concluded that experience, imagination, and memories of abstract and concrete varieties were required in grand master chess. The line of psychological chess research was followed up in the 1950s by Reuben Fine and in the 1960s by Adriaan de Groot.

Education and early career

Binet attended law school in Paris, and received his degree in 1878. He also studied Natural Sciences at the Sorbonne. His first formal job was as a researcher at a neurological clinic, Salpetriere Hospital, in Paris from 1883 – 1889. From there, Binet went on to being a researcher and associate director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Sorbonne from 1891 – 1894. In 1894, he was promoted to being the director of the laboratory until 1911 (his death). After receiving his law degree in 1878, Alfred Binet began to study science at the Sorbonne. However, he was not overly interested in his formal schooling, and started educating himself by reading psychology texts at the National Library in Paris. He soon became fascinated with the ideas of John Stuart Mill, who believed that the operations of intelligence could be explained by the laws of associationism. Binet eventually realized the limitations of this theory, but Mill's ideas continued to influence his work.

In 1883, years of unaccompanied study ended when Binet was introduced to Charles Fere, who introduced him to Jean Charcot, the director of a clinic called La Salpetriere. Charcot became his mentor and in turn, Binet accepted a job offer at the clinic. During his seven years there, any and every of Charcot's views were accepted unconditionally by Binet. This of course, was where he could have used the interactions with others and training in critical thinking that a University education provided.

In 1883, Binet began to work in Jean-Martin Charcot's neurological laboratory at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. At the time of Binet's tenure, Charcot was experimenting with hypnotism. Binet was strongly influenced by this great man, and published four articles about his work in this area. Unfortunately, Charcot's conclusions did not hold up under professional scrutiny, and Binet was forced to make an embarrassing public admission that he had been wrong in supporting his teacher.

When his intrigue with hypnosis waned as a result of failure to establish professional acceptance, he turned to the study of development spurred on by the birth of his two daughters, Madeleine and Alice (born in 1885 and 1887, respectively). In the 21 year period following his shift in career interests, Binet "published more than 200 books, articles, and reviews in what now would be called experimental, developmental, educational, social, and differential psychology" (Siegler, 1992). Bergin and Cizek (2001) suggest that this work may have influenced Jean Piaget, who later studied with Binet's collaborator Theodore Simon in 1920. Binet's research with his daughters helped him to further refine his developing conception of intelligence, especially the importance of attention span and suggestibility in intellectual development.

Despite Binet's extensive research interests and wide breadth of publications, today he is most widely known for his contributions to intelligence. Wolf (1973) postulates that this is the result of his not being affiliated with a major university. Because Binet did not have any formalized graduate study in psychology, he did not hold a professorship with a prestigious institution where students and funds would be sure to perpetuate his work (Siegler, 1992). Additionally, his more progressive theories did not provide the practical utility that his intelligence scale would evoke.

Binet and his coworker Fere discovered what they called transfer and they also recognized perceptual and emotional polarization. Binet and Fere thought their findings were a phenomenon and of utmost importance. After investigations by many, the two men were forced to admit that they were wrong about their concepts of transfer and polarization. Basically, their patients had known what was expected, what was supposed to happen, and so they simply assented. Binet had risked everything on his experiment and its results, and this failure took a toll on him.

In 1890, Binet resigned from La Salpetriere and never mentioned the place or its director again. His interests then turned toward the development of his children, Madeleine and Alice, who were two years apart. This research corresponds with that done by Jean Piaget just a short time later, regarding the development of cognition in children.

A job presented itself for Binet in 1891 at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne. He worked for a year without pay and by 1894, he took over as the director. This was a position that Binet held until his death, and it enabled him to pursue his studies on mental processes. While directing the Laboratory, Theodore Simon applied to do doctoral research under Binet's supervision. This was the beginning of their long, fruitful collaboration. During this time he also co-founded the French journal of psychology, L'Annee psychologique, serving as the director and editor-in-chief.

Later career and the Binet-Simon Test

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In 1899, Binet was asked to be a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child. French education changed profusely during the end of the nineteenth century, because of a law that passed which made it mandatory for children ages six to fourteen to attend school. This group to which Binet became a member hoped to begin studying children in a scientific manner. Binet and many other members of the society were appointed to the Commission for the Retarded. The question became "What should be the test given to children thought to possibly have learning disabilities, that might place them in a special classroom?" Binet made it his problem to establish the differences that separate the normal child from the abnormal, and to measure such differences. L'Etude experimentale de l'intelligence (Experimental Studies of Intelligence) was the book he used to describe his methods and it was published in 1903.

Development of more tests and investigations began soon after the book, with the help of a young medical student named Theodore Simon. Simon had nominated himself a few years before as Binet's research assistant and worked with him on the intelligence tests that Binet is known for, which share Simon's name as well. In 1905, a new test for measuring intelligence was introduced and simply called the Binet–Simon scale. In 1908, they revised the scale, dropping, modifying, and adding tests and also arranging them according to age levels from three to thirteen.

In 1904 a French professional group for child psychology, La Société Libre pour l'Etude Psychologique de l'Enfant, was called upon by the French government to appoint a commission on the education of retarded children. The commission was asked to create a mechanism for identifying students in need of alternative education. Binet, being an active member of this group, found the impetus for the development of his mental scale.

Binet and Simon, in creating what historically is known as the Binet-Simon Scale, comprised a variety of tasks they thought were representative of typical children's abilities at various ages. This task-selection process was based on their many years of observing children in natural settings. They then tested their measurement on a sample of fifty children, ten children per five age groups. The children selected for their study were identified by their school teachers as being average for their age. The purpose of this scale of normal functioning, which would later be revised twice using more stringent standards, was to compare children's mental abilities relative to those of their normal peers (Siegler, 1992).

The scale consisted of thirty tasks of increasing complexity. The easiest of these could be accomplished by all children, even those who were severely retarded. Some of the simplest test items assessed whether or not a child could follow a lighted match with his eyes or shake hands with the examiner. Slightly harder tasks required children to point to various named body parts, repeat back a series of 3 digits, repeat simple sentences, and to define words like house, fork or mama. More difficult test items required children to state the difference between pairs of things, reproduce drawings from memory or to construct sentences from three given words such as "Paris, river and fortune." The hardest test items included asking children to repeat back 7 random digits, find three rhymes for the French word obéisance and to answer questions such as "My neighbor has been receiving strange visitors. He has received in turn a doctor, a lawyer, and then a priest. What is taking place?" (Fancher, 1985).

For the practical use of determining educational placement, the score on the Binet-Simon scale would reveal the child's mental age. For example, a 6 year-old child who passed all the tasks usually passed by 6 year-olds--but nothing beyond--would have a mental age that exactly matched his chronological age, 6.0. (Fancher, 1985).

Binet was forthright about the limitations of his scale. He stressed the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, measures. Binet also stressed that intellectual development progressed at variable rates and could be influenced by the environment; therefore, intelligence was not based solely on genetics, was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be found in children with comparable backgrounds (Siegler, 1992). Given Binet's stance that intelligence testing was subject to variability and was not generalizable, it is important to look at the metamorphosis that mental testing took on as it made its way to the U.S.

While Binet was developing his mental scale, the business, civic, and educational leaders in the U.S. were facing issues of how to accommodate the needs of a diversifying population, while continuing to meet the demands of society. There arose the call to form a society based on meritocracy (Siegler,1992) while continuing to underline the ideals of the upper class. In 1908, H.H. Goddard, a champion of the eugenics movement, found utility in mental testing as a way to evidence the superiority of the white race. After studying abroad, Goddard brought the Binet-Simon Scale to the United States and translated it into English.

Following Goddard in the U.S. mental testing movement was Lewis Terman who took the Simon-Binet Scale and standardized it using a large American sample. The new Standford-Binet scale was no longer used solely for advocating education for all children, as was Binet's objective. A new objective of intelligence testing was illustrated in the Stanford-Binet manual with testing ultimately resulting in "curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency (p.7)" Terman, L., Lyman, G., Ordahl, G., Ordahl, L., Galbreath, N., & Talbert, W. (1916). The Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Scale for Measuring Intelligence. Baltimore: Warwick & York.(White, 2000).

It follows that we should question why Binet did not speak out concerning the newfound uses of his measure. Siegler (1992) pointed out that Binet was somewhat of an isolationist in that he never traveled outside of France and he barely participated in professional organizations. Additionally, his mental scale was not adopted in his own country during his lifetime and therefore was not subjected to the same fate. Finally, when Binet did become aware of the "foreign ideas being grafted on his instrument" he condemned those who with 'brutal pessimism' and 'deplorable verdicts' were promoting the concept of intelligence as a single, unitary construct (White, 2000).

From 1905 to 1908, Binet and Simon developed a test primarily for kids ages 3 to 15 that would compare their intellectual capabilities to other children of the same age. He did a lot of trial and error testing with students from his area. Binet studied groups of “normal” children, and also children who were mentally challenged. He had to figure out which tasks each group of students was able to complete, and what would be considered standard in the groups. The tests were held between one interviewer and one student, and determined what level of intellectual thinking the student had achieved. The invention of the intelligence test was extremely important to the field of education.

Binet published the third version of the Binet-Simon scale right before he died in 1911, but it was still unfinished. If it were not for his early death, Binet surely would have continued to revise the scale. Still, the Binet-Simon scale was and is hugely popular around the world, mainly because it is easy to give and fairly brief.

Since his death, many people in many ways have honored Binet, but two of these stand out. In 1917, the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child, to whom Binet became a member in 1899 and which prompted his development of the intelligence tests, changed their name to La Societe Alfred Binet, in memory of the renowned psychologist. The second honor was not until 1984, when the journal Science 84 picked the Binet-Simon scale, as one of twenty of this century's most significant developments or discoveries.

He studied sexual behavior, coining the term erotic fetishism to describe individuals whose sexual interests in nonhuman objects, such as articles of clothing.[1] He also studied abilities of Valentine Dencausse, the most famous chiromancer in Paris in those days.

Publications

  • La psychologie du raisonnement; Recherches expérimentales par l'hypnotisme (1886; English translation, 1899), his first book.
  • Perception intérieure (1887).
  • Etudes de psychologie expérimentale (1888).
  • Les altérations de la personnalité (1892; English translation, 1896).
  • Introduction à la psychologie expérimentale (1894; with co-authors).
  • On Double Consciousness (1896).
  • La fatigue intellectuelle (1898; with co-author Henri).
  • La Suggestibilité (1900).
  • Etude expérimentale de l'intelligence (1903).
  • L'âme et le corps (1905).
  • Les révélations de l'écriture d'après un contrôle scientifique (1906).
  • Les enfants anormaux (1907; with co-author Simon).
  • Les idées sur les enfants (1900).

He was one of the editors of L'année psychologique, a yearly volume comprising original articles and reviews of the progress of psychology.

References

  1. ^ Binet, A. (1887). Le fétichisme dans l’amour. Revue Philosophique, 24, 143–167, 252–274.

Bibliography

  • Foschi, Renato; Cicciola, Elisabetta (2006), "Politics and naturalism in the 20th century psychology of Alfred Binet.", History of psychology 9 (4): 267–89, 2006 Nov, doi:10.1037/1093-4510.9.4.267, PMID 17333631 
  • Staum, Martin S (2007), "Ribot, Binet, and the emergence from the anthropological shadow.", Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 43 (1): 1–18, doi:10.1002/jhbs.20206, PMID 17205542 
  • Faber, Diana (2003), "Archival note: an inquiry into the relationshp between Alfred Binet and Cyril Burt.", Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 39 (3): 289–97, doi:10.1002/jhbs.10111, PMID 12891695 
  • Nicolas, Serge; Ferrand, Ludovic (2002), "Alfred Binet and higher education.", History of psychology 5 (3): 264–83, 2002 Aug, doi:10.1037/1093-4510.5.3.264, PMID 12269336 
  • Binet, A; Simon, T (1997), "An investigation concerning the value of the oral method. 1909.", American annals of the deaf 142 (3): 35–45, 1997 Jul, PMID 9222149 
  • Martin, O (1997), "[Psychological measurement from Binet to Thurstone, (1900-1930)]", Revue de synthèse / Centre international de synthèse (4): 457–93, PMID 11625304 
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See also

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