In 1894, he was promoted to being the director of the laboratory until 1911 (his death). From there, Binet went on to being a researcher and associate director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Sorbonne from 1891 to 1894. His first formal position was as a researcher at a neurological clinic, Salpêtrière Hospital, in Paris from 1883 to 1889. He also studied physiology at the Sorbonne. Alfred Binet was born to a Jewish family, but he was not adherent of the Jewish faith.īinet attended law school in Paris, and received his degree in 1878. Along with his collaborator Théodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his test in 19, the last of which appeared just before his death.īiography Education and early career īinet was born as Alfredo Binetti in Nice, which was then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia until its annexation by the Second French Empire in 1860, and the ensuing policy of Francization. In 1904, the French Ministry of Education asked psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a method that would determine which students did not learn effectively from regular classroom instruction so they could be given remedial work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Alfred Binet ( French: 8 July 1857 – 18 October 1911), born Alfredo Binetti, was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet–Simon test. Human intelligence: Historical influences, current controversies, teaching resources. The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. At the time of his death in 1911, Binet was working on a further revision of his scale. Nevertheless, Binet was hesitant to quantify intelligence because he believed that one could improve the intelligence levels of retarded children and that intelligence is a not fixed quantity. Revised scales incorporating standardization and a formula for calculating “intellectual level” were issued in 19. The Binet-Simon Intelligence Scales, published in 1905, used items of increasing difficulty that assessed a wide variety of mental functions and were tied together by the use of practical judgment. Binet quickly came to see that the age at which children were able to accomplish certain tasks was a crucial factor in discriminating levels of mental acuity, with normal children able to pass the same tests at younger ages than those who were deficient. Realizing the need for a reliable diagnostic system to identify this condition, Binet and his collaborator Theodore Simon set out to develop a series of test tasks that would differentiate levels of retardation. In 1904, following the enactment of universal education laws in France, Binet was appointed to a commission formed by the government to investigate mental subnormality-as mental retardation was then known- in children. His 1903 book, L’Étude expérimentale de l’intelligence, is a notable work that recounts Binet’s observations of many mental tests he tried on his two daughters. Binet believed testing should tap higher order mental abilities instead of elementary processes. He doubted the value of the sensorimotor tests for assessing mental abilities that predominated at the time. His use of case studies helped him to appreciate the fact that intelligence is complex and needs to be measured with multidimensional scales. Binet’s interest in psychology caused him to start the first French journal in the field, L’Année Psychologique, in 1895.Īs an experimental child psychologist, Binet led a research program he called “individual psychology.” Binet believed that intelligence could never be isolated from the actual experiences of individuals or their environments. In 1891, he went to work with Beaunis at the Sorbonne’s Physiological Psychology Laboratory in 1894, Binet became director of that lab, where he remained for the rest of his life. Through his study of hypnosis during this period, Binet came to appreciate the value of the case study method and the role of suggestibility. This led him to volunteer to work for Charcot, the famous neurologist who directed the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Binet earned a law degree and attended medical school, but he abandoned both fields and turned his attention to experimental psychology. His independent wealth allowed him to pursue his interests and work without remuneration throughout his life. Binet was born in 1857, the only child of a physician father and artist mother. Alfred Binet was a French pioneer of modern psychological testing who developed the prototype of many intelligence tests in use today, including the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.
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