Alfred Binet was born on July 11, 1857 in Nice, France. He was the only child of a physician father and it was quite natural that Alfred intended to follow his footsteps. Unfortunately, his parents divorced when he was very young and he was raised by his mother.
In his youth, Alfred was not an extraordinarily promising youth, though he showed talent and willingness to work. After graduating from Lycee, he embarked on a career in law, but it did not suit him and he shifted to medical studies.
His entry into psychology was a mere accident. He started by reading psychological topics at the French National Library. He would read English as fluently as he would read French. He became fascinated with the theories of John Stuart Mill and Associationism. Associationism according to Mill held that the operations of intelligence were nothing more than diverse forms of the Laws of Association. Binet came to realize that Mill’s theory of Association had some limitations, but never lost essence of its explanatory power.
In 1880, he published his first work. Binet accepted a position at Salpetriere Hospital in 1883, where he worked with its director, the famous neurologist and psychiatrist Jean Charcot.
Under Charcot’s supervision he observed and experimented with hypnosis. Binet accepted hypnosis critically and vehemently defended the methods of his mentor Charcot. Binet began to study hypnosis, but much to the discredit of the research a great deal of subjectivity was involved.
In 1884, Binet married Laure Balbiani. He had two daughters, Madeleine and Alice, which true to the form of early explorers of the human mind, became his experimental subjects. In 1887, he was honored by French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences as Laureat, with a prize of 1000 francs, a sizeable amount in those days.
Later, Binet worked on his own on individual psychology. He developed and tried all kinds of tests and puzzles with his two daughters – Madeleine and Alice. It was through such research study on his daughters, that he began to discover the importance of attention span on the development of adult intelligence.
All through this time he was very active, in writing research papers, articles on his experiments at Salpetriere, and with his private ideas and musings. He also worked with his father-in-law who lectured on heredity. During this period he wrote on Free Will versus Determinism and also studied the psychology of Law. Later, on Theodule Ribot’s advice, (an eminent French psychologist 1835-1916), he studied psychopathology.
By 1890, Binet had broken off his connections with the Salpetriere, and started a study of cognitive processes. For this study he used his daughters as subjects.
In 1891, Binet accidentally met Dr. Henri Beaunis on a railway platform, and asked him for a job at the Sorbonne. After some heated arguments on hypnosis, Dr. Beaunis agreed to give him some work at the research laboratory at Sorbonne. Binet was hardworking and his productivity during this period was quite admirable. By 1894, he became the director of the laboratory.
In 1894, he earned his D.Sc. from the University of Sorbonne. He also edited his journal L’ anne Psychologique that year.
Binet, then with his interest in child development peaked, began to study the effect of suggestibility in experiments on children. From this research Binet discovered that age played a major role in the development of children’s mental faculties.
In 1890, a man named Theodore Simon applied for doctoral research under Binet’s supervision. Simon was a French educator and he had a strong concern for mental abnormality. Around the same time, Binet became interested in studying judgment, attention and reasoning. He was very much interested to study the complex mental processes. He tried greater variety of tests than his predecessors. He also tried to find out just how bright and dull children differ from each other. Regarding the difference of bright and dull, Binet tried all sorts of measures, such as recall of digits, suggestibility, size of cranium, moral judgment, mental addition, graphology and even palmistry.
Binet – Simon Scale
Ultimately, he found that sensory judgment and other simple functions had little relation. Binet’s most important work was in intelligence testing. Theodore Simon, his colleague and one of the eminent psychologists of Paris, assisted him to devise a test to measure the mental ability of children. The first scale of intelligence (Binet–Simon scale) appeared in 1905. In this scale, Binet had children do tasks such as follow commands, copy patterns, name objects and put things in order to arrange them properly. He conducted the test on Paris school children and created a standard based on his data. For example, if 70 % of 8-year-old children could pass a particular test, then success on the test represented the 8-year-old level of intelligence.
The Psychology of Reasoning :
In 1886, Binet brought these diverse interests together in his first book, The Psychology of Reasoning. This book was written very clearly and was unambiguously argued. It illustrated the way in which the new scientific psychology made use of three of the most fundamental constructs in its theoretical repertoire, viz., association, and the imaginal basis of thought and unconscious inference
Theta Wolf, Binet’s biographer pointed out that Binet wrote : "The Psychology of Reasoning in part at least to demonstrate that the principles of the association of ideas could explain all psychological phenomena. Binet expressed his views in his book Psychology of Reasoning. The fundamental element of the mind is the image…reasoning is the organization of images, determined by the properties of the images themselves and…images have merely to be brought together for them to become organized…reasoning follows with the inevitable necessity of a reflex."
In other words, reasoning consisted of an associated succession of recalled images and present stimuli.
When The Psychology of Reasoning was first published in 1886, in French and in English in 1899, it was hailed as a pioneering effort.
Pierre Janet, a famous neurologist and psychologist called it, "the first work in psychology founded on experimental researches on hypnotism."
Undoubtedly, it is the fact that the work was an almost perfect intellectual period piece.
Animal Magnetism :
When Charles Fere (1852-1907) was Assistant Physician at the Salpetriere, Binet collaborated with him in writing a volume titled Animal Magnetism in 1887. The book purports with him in writing to be a study of hypnosis. This made in accordance with the method inaugurated by Charcot. When Binet was in Salpetriere, Charcot was exceedingly popular, attracting enormous audiences. He was using hypnosis for the treatment of hysterical patients at Paris.
L’ anne Psychologique : (Journal of Psychology)
In 1895, Binet founded the journal L’ anne Psychologique. In this journal he published a number of his studies and his student’s research work. It is the first French journal devoted to psychology. About the same time he opened a laboratory in Paris for child and experimental teaching.
L’Etude experimental de I’intelligence : (Experimental Study of Intelligence)
Binet devoted himself to the experimental investigation of the psychology of individual differences or differential psychology. In this respect he left the tradition of French psychology which was essentially psychopathology and psychotherapy. The attempt of the English psychologist Sir Francis Galton to record individual differences by means of standardized tests left a deep impression on Binet.
His work on L’Etude experimental de I’intelligence published in 1903 considered, a notable work in the field experimental psychology. In this book Binet wrote about an investigation of the mental characteristics of his two daughters, which he developed into a systematic study of two contrasted types of personalities.
During the next few years, Binet spent much of his time testing the children and revising the intelligence tests, first in 1908 and again in 1911. Binet was revising these scales at the time of his death in Paris on October 18, 1911.
Undoubtedly, Binet’s early work on intelligence testing has stimulated an enormous amount of research in this area of psychology.
French psychologist Alfred Binet, was known for developing a Standard Intelligence Test.
In 1904, Binet was appointed by a ministerial commission to pick out the slow learners from the capable school children in France. He started pedagogical laboratory in 1905 and together with his colleague Theodore Simon published a number of papers and articles. He also devised a test to measure the mental ability of children.
His pioneering work in intelligence measurement remains the most influential work among psychologists of other countries. The Stanford Binet Scale, an adaptation of Binet’s original test, was widely used for many years in the United States. His tests were hailed as the work of a genius, the world over.
July 11,1857
Binet was born in Nice, France.
1878
He abandoned a law career to devote himself to medico – scientific studies.
1884
He married Laure Balbiani
1887
Collaborated with Charles Fere in writing a volume entitled Animal Magnetism.
1891
He became associated with a psychological research laboratory at the Sorbonne.
1905 to 1911
Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon develop the Binet–Simon test for children of the age group 3-13.
1907
Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon publish Les Enfants Anormaux.
1895 to 1911
He served as a Director at psychological research laboratory at Sorbonne.
1895
He founded the journal L’ anne Psychologique.
1899
His publication on The Psychology of Reasoning.
1900
His publication on Suggestibility.
1910
His publication on Hysteria.
1911
He died in Paris on October 18.
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• I began with the idea, impressed upon me by the studies of so many other scientists, that intellectual superiority is tied to superiority of cerebral volume.
• It is a matter of great delicacy to make the distinction between children who are unstable and those who have rebellious dispositions.
• In every perception there are sensations and something more which the mind adds to the sensations …. Perception is the process by which the mind completes, with the accompaniment of images, an impression of the senses.
• Intellect, is compounded of judgment, common sense, initiative and the ability to adapt one self.
• A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment, but with good judgment he can never either.
