Alfred Binet: how to measure intelligence?

Alfred Binet was a French psychologist famous for developing the first intelligence test, widely used today.. The test originated after the French government commissioned it to develop an instrument that could identify schoolchildren who needed remedial studies.

With his collaborator Theodore Simon, he created the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. Lewis Terman later revised the scale and standardized the test with subjects taken from an American sample. The test later became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales..

Next, we approach the life of Alfred Binet and delve, in more detail, into the keys to his intelligence tests and his contributions.

Childhood and youth

Binet was born in Nice, the only child of a marriage formed by a doctor and an artist. In his youth, he was not an exceptional or very promising student, although he showed some talent and a great desire to work. After graduating from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, he studied law and graduated in jurisprudence.

His family’s wealth made it unnecessary for him to practice law.. Therefore, he dedicated his time to reading about psychology at the National Library of France, apparently a very formal establishment.

In 1880, Binet published an article related to psychology, although it was widely criticized when it was discovered that it had been plagiarized.

The topic of animal magnetism, also known as hypnosis, captured Binet’s interest for a time and he published numerous articles on magnetism. His articles detailed how magnets can change emotions, influence perceptions, and achieve all kinds of effects..

To Binet’s shame, his findings would be shown to have been a fraud, the product of using poor experimental methodology.

Changing course

Two years later, he began working at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where his scientific training methods began to be consolidated.

Binet became a student of Jean Martin Charcot, with whom he remained until 1891. Binet accepted without reservation and vehemently defended Charcot’s methods and his doctrines on hypnotic transference and polarization.

Subsequently, he was forced to accept Delboeuf’s counterattacks from the Nancy School. This fact caused a division between the student and the teacher. However, acceptance of his errors of judgment tempered his later methods.

Binet also studied Hippolyte Taine, Théodule Armand Ribot and John Stuart Mill. In 1884, Binet married Laure Balbiani, the daughter of Edouard-Gérard Balbiani, an embryologist at the Collège de France; The couple had two daughters.

In 1887, he was awarded by the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. She worked with his father-in-law who gave lectures on inheritance. He also wrote about free will and determinism and studied the psychology of courts of law.

In 1890, Binet had severed its connection with the Salpêtrière Hospital. Subsequently, he undertook a study of cognitive processes and used his daughters as subjects.

Curiously, although the age difference between the daughters made the developmental differences quite clear, Binet never thought to take that observation further.. This theory would have to wait for Jean Piaget.

Collaboration with Beaunis and the Sorbonne

In 1891, Binet met Dr. Henri Beaunis and asked him for a job at the Sorbonne. Despite the heated arguments between them over the subject of hypnosis, Beaunis agreed, possibly because the wealthy Binet did not need a salary.

In 1892, he was appointed deputy director of the physiological psychology laboratory created at the Sorbonne in 1889 and directed by Henri Beaunis.. That same year, he was awarded a doctorate in natural sciences, his dissertation was on the correlation between the physiology and behavior of insects.

In 1895, Binet and Beaunis founded the first French journal of psychology, L’Année psychologiquewhich is still active today. In the same year, he succeeded Beaunis as head of the Laboratory, now connected with the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he worked until his death in 1911.

The Binet intelligence test

Binet had been impressed by the English psychologist Sir Francis Galton’s (1822-1911) attempt to record individual differences by means of standardized tests.. He adapted Galton’s method to study eminent writers, artists, mathematicians, and chess players. In this way, he supplemented the tests with observations about body type, handwriting, and other characteristics.

In 1903, he completed a notable work: The experimental study of intelligence. This research described the mental characteristics of her two daughters. To achieve this, she developed the systematic study of two contrasting types of personalities.

His experiments demonstrated the impossibility of translating reasoning into sensory terms.. In addition to proving that the unit and activity of thought were independent with respect to images. Scientists such as RS Woodworth and K. Bühler would reach similar results in 1907.

Regarding the evaluation of intelligence, Binet recognized that An intelligence test might provide only a sample of all of an individual’s intelligent behaviors.. In this way, Binet expressed that an intelligence test was not defining for an individual.

Furthermore, Binet wrote that the purpose of an intelligence test was to classify, not measure.. The notion of an intelligence quotient was proposed by the German psychologist William Stern and vehemently rejected by Binet. His main argument was that the nature of intelligence is too complex to be captured in a single number.

Alfred Binet’s contributions to psychology

Today, Alfred Binet is often cited as one of the most influential psychologists in history.. While his intelligence scale serves as the basis for modern intelligence tests, Binet himself did not believe that his test measured a permanent or innate degree of intelligence.

According to Binet, an individual’s score on an intelligence test can vary over time. He also suggested that factors such as motivation and other variables may play a role in exam results. There is no doubt that his studies have contributed enormously to subsequent studies and have opened up the field of psychology a little more.

You might be interested…