ALFRED BINET HOW TO

After several revisions, this gradually became the test of choice and Binet’s simpler, more verbal test fell in popularity. In 1939 the idea that general intelligence could be quantified in this way was cemented and David Wechsler published his own test, adding non-verbal elements. In World War I Robert Yerkes also worked with both Terman and Goddard to design a controversial test that screened men for training to become officers. Though Binet condemned this outcome, the Stanford-Binet remained America’s most popular test for general intelligence for decades. His aim was to demonstrate the superiority of the white race, eliminate “feeble-mindedness” and select for an industrially efficient population. The man who originally imported and translated the test, H. Lewis Terman standardized the Binet-Simon test for the more diverse American population in 1916, where it flourished as a new tool in a rapidly changing political environment, becoming the Stanford-Binet test. Though his test was only designed to sort children into a class pitched at the correct level for them, the test soon evolved as a tool to measure total intelligence in the rest of the world. Alfred Binet, one of the most influential French psychologists and scientists, is known for his extensive research related to the mental capacity of humans. He also believed that there was a strong component of “common sense” and that studies of human intelligence should be qualitative and not quantitative. While the test may look a little coarse to modern eyes, the fact is that Binet understood intelligence to be multifaceted, ungeneralizable and liable to develop at its own pace. If, for example, a 9-year-old child passed all the questions that most other 9-year-old children passed, they were scored as having a mental age of 9. Questions ranged from very easy (name various body parts) to more difficult (find rhyming words or remember a string of numbers). They gave their test to a group of children selected by teachers as being average, to confirm the test as a standard by which other children could be compared. They developed the Binet-Simon scale and made many subsequent adjustments.īased on their experience and observations, the pair included thirty questions they believed a child at each age ought to be able to answer.

ALFRED BINET HOW TO

Binet and Simon were appointed to the now unfortunately named Commission for the Retarded, where they became curious about how to study children’s intelligence experimentally. France was making advancements in its education system and intended to reduce the number of struggling children being diverted into asylums.

Alfred binet