Alfred Binet

(1857 - 1911)
Compiled by Trisha Imhoff (May, 2000)
Biography
Theory
Time Line
Bibliography
retrieved from http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/binet.htm on April 21, 2015

Alfred Binet was born on July 11, 1857 in Nice, France. He was the only child of a physician
father and an artist mother. His parents separated when he was very young and he was raised by
his mother who went with him to Paris when he was 15, so he could attend a famous law school
there. Binet received his license to practice law in 1878 and then decided to follow the family
tradition of medicine. Nevertheless, his interest in psychology became more important than
finishing his medical studies.
Reading books by Charles Darwin, Alexander Bain and others, turned Binet into somewhat of a
self-taught psychologist. Introverted and a loner, this self-educating suited him. What he did not
realize was that he would later pay, because of what he was deprived of by not attending a
University and formally studying psychology.
In 1883, years of unaccompanied study ended when Binet was introduced to Charles Fere, who
introduced him to Jean Charcot, the director of a clinic called La Salpetriere. Charcot became his
mentor and in turn, Binet accepted a job offer at the clinic. During his seven years there, any and
every of Charcot's views were accepted unconditionally by Binet. This of course, was where he
could have used the interactions with others and training in critical thinking that a University
education provided.
Binet and his coworker Fere discovered what they called transfer and they also recognized
perceptual and emotional polarization. Binet and Fere thought their findings were a phenomena
and of utmost importance. After investigations by many, the two men were forced to admit that
they were wrong about their concepts of transfer and polarization. Basically, their patients had
known what was expected, what was supposed to happen, and so they simply assented. Binet had
risked everything on his experiment and its results, and this failure took a toll on him.
In 1890, Binet resigned from La Salpetriere and never mentioned the place or its director again.
His interests then turned toward the development of his children, Madeleine and Alice, who were
two years apart. This research corresponds with that done by Jean Piaget just a short time later,
regarding the development of cognition in children.

A job presented itself for Binet in 1891 at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the
Sorbonne. He worked for a year without pay and by 1894, he took over as the director. This was
a position that Binet held until his death, and it enabled him to pursue his studies on mental
processes. During this time he also served as the director and editor-in-chief of the number one
French journal of psychology, L'Annee psychologique.
In 1899, Binet was asked to be a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the
Child. French education changed profusely during the end of the nineteenth century, because of a
law that passed which made it mandatory for children ages six to fourteen to attend school. This
group to which Binet became a member hoped to begin studying children in a scientific manner.
Binet and many other members of the society were appointed to the Commission for the
Retarded. The question became "What should be the test given to children thought to possibly
have learning disabilities, that might place them in a special classroom?" Binet made it his
problem to establish the differences that separate the normal child from the abnormal, and to
measure such differences. L'Etude experimentale de l'intelligence (Experimental Studies of
Intelligence) was the book he used to describe his methods and it was published in 1903.
Development of more tests and investigations began soon after the book, with the help of a
young medical student named Theodore Simon. Simon had nominated himself a few years
before as Binet's research assistant and worked with him on the intelligence tests that Binet is
known for, which share Simon's name as well. In 1905, a new test for measuring intelligence was
introduced and simply called the Binet-Simon scale. In 1908, they revised the scale, dropping,
modifying, and adding tests and also arranging them according to age levels from three to
thirteen.
Binet published the third version of the Binet-Simon scale right before he died in 1911, but it
was still unfinished. If it were not for his early death, Binet surely would have continued to
revise the scale. Still, the Binet-Simon scale was and is hugely popular around the world, mainly
because it is easy to give and fairly brief.
Since his death, many people in many ways have honored Binet, but two of these stand out. In
1917, the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child, to whom Binet became a
member in 1899 and which prompted his development of the intelligence tests, changed their
name to La Societe Alfred Binet, in memory of the renowned psychologist. The second honor
was not until 1984, when the journal Science 84 picked the Binet-Simon scale, as one of twenty
of this century's most significant developments or discoveries.

Theory
After working with many prominent psychologists, Binet and Fere finally discovered something
on their own; transfer and perceptual and emotional polarization. Transfer was a concept where it
was reported that hypnotized patients could transfer a movement such as lifting an arm, to the
other side of the body by the use of a magnet. Perceptual polarization meant that an existing
perception could be changed to the polar opposite by a magnet and a magnet produced and

opposite emotion in emotional polarization. They thought these findings were extremely
important, but they were eventually forced to admit that they were wrong.
After Binet resigned from La Salpetriere he was without a job and spent time writing and
producing dramatic plays, four of which were set to stage in Paris. He soon turned to his two
girls for study. What fascinated Binet were the differences between the two girls. He concocted a
number of tests for the girls and found that Madeleine, the older girl, learned and responded
differently than Alice.
When Binet became a member of the Commission for the Retarded he made it his mission to
define the differences between children of different mental capacities. He developed tests with
the help of Theodore Simon and together they introduced the Binet-Simon scale. The two men
were very specific regarding where and how the tests should be given. For example, it was to be
given under controlled conditions, it consisted of thirty tests arranged in order of difficulty, and
each child was to pass as many as possible. For three years, Binet and Simon gave the tests to as
many Parisian schoolchildren as they could. Revising the scale in 1908 introduced the point that
children at, say, age eight should test to a mental level of eight. Mental level was a better term
than mental age for Binet and Simon because it meant that there could be a change in the test
results. The third version of the scale was left unfinished around 1911 and this time Binet
arranged the tests according to mental levels from age three fifteen, and he even included five
tests for adults.

Time Line
1857 Born in Nice, France on July 11
1872 Went to Paris with his mother and attended law school
1883 Accepted a position at the clinic La Salpetriere
1892 Forced to admit that his experiment done with Fere at La Salpetriere was wrong
1890 Resigned from the Salpetriere clinic
1890 Published three papers describing his observations of his daughters
1891 Joined the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne
1894 Became the director at the Sorbonne
1899 Invited to become a member of the newly founded Societe Libre pour l'Etude
Psychologique de l'Enfant (the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child)
1903 Appointed to the Commission for the Retarded
1903 Developed the first intelligence tests with the help of Simon
1903 Published his methods in the book L'Etude experimentale de l'intelligence
1905 Published a number of papers in L'Annee psychologique describing a new scale for
measurement of intelligence in children, the Binet-Simon scale
1908 Binet-Simon scale is revised, second version
1911 Binet dies just after the third version of Binet-Simon test is published
1917 Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child voted to change their name to La
Societe Alfred Binet
1984 Binet's development of the intelligence test is named one of twenty of this century's most
significant developments or discoveries in the journal Science 84

Bibliography
Hothersall, David. (1995). History of Psychology. McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Pollack, Robert H. and Margaret W. Brenner. (1969). The Experimental Psychology of Alfred
Binet: Selected Papers. New York, Springer Publishing Company, Inc.
Terman, Lewis M. and Maud A. Merrill. (1960). Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Boston,
Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin Company.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank
http://ukdb.web.aol.com/hutchinson/encyclopedia
http://edweb.gsn.org/edref.mi.histschl