Background
Alfred Binet was born on July 8, 1857, in Nice, France, the only child of a physician father and an artist mother. Binet’s parents were divorced when he was quite young. He was mostly raised by his mother.
Alfred Binet was born on July 8, 1857, in Nice, France, the only child of a physician father and an artist mother. Binet’s parents were divorced when he was quite young. He was mostly raised by his mother.
Alfred Binet studied law and medicine in Paris and then obtained a doctorate in natural science in 1878. 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).
Alfred Binet is best known for his work on the measurement of intelligence, from which the still widely used Stanford Binet test is derived. The son of an artist and a doctor. Binet had wideranging interests and published a philosophical article in La Revue Philosophique while still a doctoral student. It was the editor of La Revue, Théodore Ribot. who persuaded Binet to concentrate on psychology. His research was always detailed and systematic. He worked in schools and hospitals and with his own daughters. Initially sympathetic to associationism. his results led him to see that, contrary to the associationist theory, unconscious mental processes, the attitude or set °l the individual and developmental factors could all exert important influences on thinking.
Binet's work on children’s intelligence was carried out with a younger colleague, Théodore Simon. They devised a series of numerical, visuosPatial and verbal tasks of varying difficulty, and treasured the abilities of children of different ages J° perform them. The IQ or intelligence quotient or a given child could then be calculated as the child s mental age divided y his or her chronological age and expressed as a Percentage. Thus an above average child scores over 100 per cent, a below average child below 100 Per cent, for any particular age group.
Binet’s test should be understood against the extensive background of research and clinical experience on which it was based. It was originally commissioned by the French government, followjng the migration of rural families into the towns,
0 distinguish those children whose educational f1 ures were due to cultural dislocation from
ose who were genuinely disadvantaged intellecUa y B has often been portrayed as a mechanical treasure, allocating children to fixed, dehumanized categories. However. Binet himself emphaS1^cd that individual factors could have important ln uences on test performance, that testing could never be wholly divorced from cultural inlluences an that his test should be supplemented by other odes of assessment. Binet has had an enduring " Uence on theories of child development and d'tr Standardlzed measurement of individual
1 erences. The original Binet-Simon scale was ^standardized by L. M. Ternian and colleagues at mnford University in 1916 and 1937.
°urces: Union Catalogue of Departmental and College Libraries; Goldenson; Edwards.
Quotations:
"Materialism is the metaphysics of those who refuse to be metaphysicians."
"A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment; but with good judgment he can never be either. Indeed the rest of the intellectual faculties seem of little importance in comparison with judgment."
The English empiricist tradition, including J. S. Mill; Hippolyte Taine in France.
Alfred Binet was married to Laure Balbiani. Together the couple had two daughters, Madeleine and Alice.