Alfred Binet
French psychologist who co-created the Binet-Simon intelligence scale
French psychologist who, with the psychiatrist Théodore Simon, produced the 1905 scale to identify schoolchildren needing special help, a forerunner of modern intelligence tests.
Why this person matters
The Binet-Simon scale was designed to decide which children needed special schooling, following a 1904 commission of the French Ministry of Education. Its idea of mental age shaped later IQ tests, whose aims shifted when the scale was adapted in the United States.
Main contributions
Binet-Simon scale
With Théodore Simon he built a series of tasks of increasing difficulty. A preliminary version appeared in 1905, the full scale in 1908 and a modest revision in 1911. Scores gave a child's mental age.
Cautions about measurement
In the 1905 paper Binet wrote that the scale does not measure intelligence like a length but gives 'a classification, a hierarchy among diverse intelligences'. He described psychological assessment as one of three methods, medical, pedagogical and psychological, to be used together.
Child study and journal
He co-founded L'Année psychologique and served as its director and editor-in-chief. He studied child development partly through his daughters Marguerite and Alice.
Context and limits
Binet and Simon argued that intelligence is not based solely on heredity, is malleable rather than fixed and develops at varying rates. Henry Goddard, an advocate of eugenics, brought the scale to the United States and translated it in 1908. Lewis Terman's 1916 Stanford revision came to aim at 'curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness', a shift from the original goal of educating all children. Simon's contribution was long overlooked.
In your introductory course
Thinking, language and intelligence.Appears in the intelligence chapter as the origin of IQ testing, and in discussions of how tests were later misused.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 7.5. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1904
A French Ministry of Education commission prompted work on identifying children needing special schooling.
- 1905
Published New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals in L'Année psychologique.
- 1908
Published the full Binet-Simon scale with age standards.
- 1911
Issued a modest revision shortly before his death.
Sources
- Classics in the History of Psychology (York University), Binet, New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals (Kite translation)Original work. Text passages inspected.
- New World Encyclopedia, Alfred BinetReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Alfred BinetReference work. Reference article inspected.