Alfred Binet: biography of the creator of the intelligence test

Today most of us know that it is an intelligence test. Employees in the fields of the clinic, school and the world of work, thanks to them we can have an approximate measure of the intellectual capacity of each one, something that allows, for example, to adjust education and training to the specific individual needs of those subjects with a level well above or below the half.

However, intelligence tests have not always been there, being in fact a relatively recent invention. The first of them all was created by Alfred Binet; then we will briefly review his biography.

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Alfred Binet biography

From a doctor father and a painter mother, Alfred Binet was born in Nice on July 8, 1857.

His parents would soon separate, moving with his mother to Paris. There he continued his education at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he would finish high school. Once these studies were finished, and Piaget would later do so, Alfred Binet decided to study law at the Sorbonne. However, he would end up developing a certain interest in psychology, in which he would start on a self-taught basis.

Binet married in 1884 with the daughter of the embryologist Edouard-Gérard Balbiani, which prompted him to study natural sciences, and later he would be encouraged by Ribot to continue his studies of psychology.

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Initiation and research in the psychological area

Attracted by the psychological work on hypnosis and suggestion, topics of great interest at the time, he would end up working together with Charcot at La Salpêtrière in aspects such as hypnosis, transference and perceptual polarization. He remained in that hospital until 1891, when he was forced to publicly acknowledge a series of errors as his own. methodological tasks committed by Charcot as director of the investigation during the investigation with allegedly hypnotized. After that he would leave La Salpetriere and his mentor until then, as well as research on hypnosis and suggestion.

His birth (in 1885 and 1888) and growth of his daughters would help her focus on other aspects of psychology, contributing greatly to focus his research on the development evolutionary. He would make a large number of observations regarding his growth, which would lead him to develop a concept intelligence and even begin to develop a foundation for the emergence of psychology differential.

Over time he helped found the first psychological research laboratory in his country in 1889. He would become director of said laboratory, holding the position until his death.

During the year 1892, the psychiatrist Théodore Simon would contact him, who over time would collaborate with him in the creation of the first intelligence scale. Binet would tutor his doctoral thesis regarding children with intellectual disabilities.

Furthermore, in 1895 Binet created the first French psychology journal, l'Année Psychologique.

Measuring intelligence

At that time the French government declared compulsory schooling for all infants between six and fourteen years of age. However, the sudden emergence of this law caused a large difference in the baseline level of knowledge and skills of the students, with which the administration decided that it was necessary to be able to classify students who presented great difficulties in pursuing a formal education.

To do this, the French government organized a commission to scientifically study how to identify those individuals with difficulties in pursuing an ordinary education, as well as the way in which they might be educated and the measures to be taken with them. Binet would be part of said commission, which ended up dictating that it was necessary to establish a method to identify students with educational and / or intellectual delays. It would also determine the need to separate these students from ordinary classes, emerging special education.

Although in order to classify the capacities of the students it was necessary to use some type of mechanism or instrument, at that time the only existing psychic measurements were based on Galton's biometric method, which obtained data from the measurement of physical and physiological attributes. However, intelligence is a construct that could not be measured in the same way, so Binet would be asked to develop some type of instrument for this purpose.

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The Binet-Simon scale

With the help of Simon, Binet would develop in 1905 the first scale for measuring intelligence, the Binet-Simon scale. This scale would use an executive-type criterion in which the children had to use their abilities to solve certain tasks. These tests ranged from the most sensory to more abstract tests that forced the use of intellectual capacity. It seeks to measure what both Binet and Simon understood as a fundamental factor of intelligence, practical judgment or common sense (based on the ability to understand, judge and reason correctly).

A total of thirty tasks were developed, especially related to the verbal aspect and problem solving. The main goal was to be able to distinguish those children between the ages of three and thirteen who have difficulties to follow a normative education in order to be able to offer them reinforcement. The age of the subject was taken into account, increasing with age the difficulty and level of abstraction of the tests. An accurate measurement of intellectual level was not intended, so in its original version this scale does not include a precise scoring method.

This would change in 1908, at which time Binet would carry out a revision of said scale in which he would include the concept of mental age, understood as the age at which most of the people considered normative are capable of solving the same number of problems. This made it possible to establish whether there were more or less significant delays, as well as a better classification of individuals.

Alfred Binet he was against the idea that intellectual capacities were unchangeable, raising the need for those children with abilities below the average to take special training courses in order to increase them. He considered that the environment was of fundamental importance in the development of capacities, not believing that the differences in intelligence were due solely to biological causes.

This scale was quickly popularized due to the need for it and its ease of application. Binet would continue to make improvements to it, more shortly after the third review was published he died of a stroke, in 1911.

Binet's Legacy in Psychology

After his death and even before it, many other authors were interested in the scale created in collaboration with Simon. One year before his death Goddard would translate this scale into English and try to bring it to the United States, although the presence of significant differences between the French and American populations caused methodological difficulties to exist.

Shortly after, in 1912, Stern would work on the results obtained from the scale and would emphasize that the presence of specific delays in different ages has a more relevant meaning and involves greater or lesser alteration at a certain age, creating the concept of Quotient of Intelligence.

Aware of the difficulties of application due to population differences and in knowledge of the concepts that other authors such as Stern elaborated, Terman would carry out a revision of the Binet scale, which would be called the Stanford-Binet scale. On this scale he would include the measurement of Stern's Intelligence Quotient, multiplying it by one hundred in order to eliminate fractions. He would thus create the IQ that is known today, allowing a more accurate measurement of the level of intelligence.

The Stanford-Binet scale would be the main intelligence test for decades, until be favored by the birth of the Weschler scales.

In conclusion, Alfred Binet's contributions to psychology have been of great importance, his works being his inspiration for many other authors such as Weschler or Piaget. However, his work has been used on many occasions to separate, label and disaggregate children with difficulties intellectuals, the scale of which is applied with a purpose opposite to that intended by the author (to reinforce and help children with difficulties).

Other contributions

Although Alfred Binet is mainly known for being the creator of the first intelligence test, his work was not exclusively focused on this aspect.

For example, Binet worked on the definition of what we now consider fetishism, understanding it as the product of the memory of a sexual arousal that appeared during childhood, the fetish object being the elicitator of said memory. Likewise, he would also propose a differentiation between a small fetish and a large fetish, being the paraphilic behavior typical of the latter.

He also made various contributions during his time at the Salpêtrière, such as various studies regarding hypnosis and suggestibility, or other contributions such as some referring to the study of personality.

Other works of interest include various studies on visual memory and intelligence, which he would carry out based on the game of chess. Although initially it was considered that the good player had a high visual memory and this induced that he was capable to play correctly, the conclusions of the study showed that creativity and experience.

Finally, his work on graphology is also known, or how a person's way of writing can provide us with information about their way of being and perceiving.

Bibliographic references:

• Binet, A. (1887). Le fetichisme dans l’amour. Paris, Payot.

• Gregory, R.J. (2001). Psychological evaluation. Concepts, methods and case studies. Ed. Pyramid: Madrid.

• Sanz, L.J. and Álvarez, C.A. (2012). Evaluation in Clinical Psychology. CEDE PIR Preparation Manual. 05. CEDE: Madrid.