Today I have decided to blog about Alfred Binet a French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, which is the basis of today's IQ test. Binet's principal goal was to help recognize students who needed special help in dealing with school curriculum. Along with a collaborator of his called Theodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his intelligence scale in 1908 and 1911. And a further refinement of the Binet-Simon scale was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman from Stanford Unverisity. Terman incorporated William Stern's proposal that a person's intelligence level be measured as an IQ. Terman's test, was named by him as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Binet had published the first modern intelligence test known as the Binet-Simon intelligence scale in 1905. In 1894, Binet conducted one of the first psychological studies into the game of chess. Binet's studies investigated the cognitive qualities of chess masters. Binet hypothesized that chess is dependent upon the phenomenological qualities of visual memory and after studying the reports by master chess participants it came to Binet's attention that memory was only part of the chain of cognition that was involved in the chess game process. Binet's research was conducted by blindfolding chess players and he found that masters were able to play from memory and that intermediates found this to be an impossible task. It was also concluded that experience, imagination and memories of abstract and concret varieties were essential in grand master chess. The line of psychological chess research was followed up in the 1950's by Reuben Fine and a decade later by Adriaan de Groot. At a point in Binet's career he became engrossed with the ideas of John Stuart Mill and Mill believed that the operations of intelligence could be explained by the laws of associationism. Binet came to realize the limitation of Mills theory, however Mill's ideas continued to influence Binet's work. In 1883, years of independent study ended when Binet was introduced to Charles Fere, who introduced him to Jean Charcot, the director of a clinic called Las Salpetriere. Charcot became Binet's mentor and Binet accepted a job offer at the clinic. During Binet's seven years at the clinic all of Charcot's views were accepted unconditionally by Binet. In 1883, Binet began to work in Jean-Martins Charcot's neurological laboratory at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris and at the time of Binets tenure Charcot was experimenting with hypnotism. However after Binet's curiousity in hypnotism decreased he turned to the study of development, which was also an influenced move because of the birth of his two daughters. Upon a 21 period following a shift in career interests Binet went on to publish more then 200 books, articles and reviews in what now would be called experimental, developmental, educational, social and differential psychology. Binet's research with his daughters helped him to further improve his developing ideas on intelligence and especially the importance of attention span an suggestibility within intellectual growth. Binet and fellow researcher Fere discovered what they called transfer and they also recognized perceptual and emotional polarization, however after research done by many others Binet and Fere were forced to admit that they were wrong about their notions of transfer and polarization.
Since basically, their patients had known what was expected, what was supposed to occur, and so they just assented in the research studies. Binet had risked everything on this experiment and its results, and his lack of success was a obstacle that took a toll on him. In the year 1890, Binet quit his position from La Salpetriere and did not mention it or it's director again. Binets interests then turned in the direction of the development of his two daughters Madeleine and Alice. This research is similar to that accomplished by Jean Piaget not long after, which regards the development of cognition in children. A job came about for Binet in 1891 at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne. Binet worked for a year without compensation and by 1894, Binet became the director. This was a position as director that Binet held until his death, and it fortunately allowed him to puruse his studies on mental processes. As Binet was directing the Laboratory, Theodore Simon applied to do doctoral research under Binet's guidance. So this was the beginning of Binet and Simon's long, productive work together. During this time Binet also co-founded the French journal of psychology, L'Annee psychologique, and worked as the director and editor-in-chief. In the year 1899, Binet was given a request to be a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child and to this group to which Binet became a member hoped to initiate the studying of children in a scientific way. Binet as well as many other members of the society were appointed to the Commission for the Retarded. From there in Binet's life the question then 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 a goal to establish the differences that separate the normal child from the abnormal, and to measure such differences. The book "Experimental Studies of Intelligence" was the book Binet used to describe his methods and it was published in 1903. The development of more tests and investigations where brought about with the help of the medical student Thedore Simon. Simon had nominated himself a couple of years before as Binet's research assistant and helped him work on the intelligence tests that Binet is known for, which also mutually share Simon's name. In 1905, a new test for measuring intelligence was established and it was just called the Binet–Simon scale. In the year 1908, they revised the scale, leaving out, modifying, and adding tests and also arranging them in accordance 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 asked by the French government to design a commission on the education of retarded children. The commission was asked to produce a mechanism for identifying students that could use the additional help through alternative education. Binet, was an active member of this group and he found a big need for the development of his mental scale here. Binet and Simon, in creating what historically is known as the Binet-Simon Scale, had created an assortment of tasks they thought were representative of typical children's abilities at different ages. This task-selection means was established from their many years of researching children in natural settings. They both decided to test their measurement on a sample of fifty children, ten children per five age groups. The children chosen for their study were recognized by their school teachers as being average for their age. The gist of this scale mentioned here of normal functioning, which would later be revised twice using more strict type of standards, was to compare children's mental abilities relative to those of their normal peers. Interestingly the scale was made up of thirty tasks of increasing difficulty. The less difficult of these could be completed by all children, even those who were severely retarded. For an essential use of determining educational placement, the results on the Binet-Simon scale would identify the child's mental age. Binet was upfront about the limitations of his scale. Binet emphasized the incredible diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, and not quantitative, measures in his view. "Binet also emphasized that intellectual development progressed at variable rates and could be influenced by the environment; so intelligence was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be found in children with comparable backgrounds" (Siegler, 1992). H.H. Goddard, a influencer of the eugenics movement, brought the Binet-Simon Scale to the United States and translated it into English. Following Goddard in the U.S. mental testing movement was all about 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 strictly for promoting education for all children, although that was Binet's objective. So "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).
In the years between 1905 to 1908, Binet and Simon produced a test primarily for kids ages 3 to 15 that would compare their intellectual capabilities to other children of the same age. Binet conducted a lot of trial and error testing with students. Binet researched groups of “normal” children, in addition to children who were mentally challenged. Binet had to find out for himself which tasks each group of students was able to complete, and what would be considered standard in the groups. Binet had published the third version of the Binet-Simon scale right before he died in 1911. Still, the Binet-Simon scale was and is largely popular all over the world, mainly because it is easy to give and is rather brief.
Binet also studied sexual behavior, coining the term erotic fetishism to describe individuals whose sexual interests are in nonhuman objects, such as articles of clothing. And Binet also researched the abilities of Valentine Dencausse, the most famous fortune teller in Paris in those days. In writing this blog I think it is interesting to study someone as smart as Binet and who offered so much to education and psychology in his career studies of intelligence.