Alfred Binet
... today (Parke et al, 1994). After the birth of his two daughters, Alfred Binet’s fascination with the development and function of the mind led him to conduct much research on intelligence, especially the importance of attention span and memory. His own children served as his initial subjects for such discoveries as perception of length, number, movement and other developmental learning differences. He humourously stated in one article, “ My studies were done soley on the two little sisters I mentioned earlier, who are so to speak , constantly before my eyes” (Pollack and Brenner,!969). Unfortunately, during his entire career Alfred Binet was not able to secure a position of professorship at a university or prestigious institution. However, he gave considerable attention to educational reform and the creation of a scientifically based “mental orthopedics.” He joined and became president of the Societe libre pour l’etude psychologique de l’enfant (The Society for the Study of Child Psychology) (Parke et al.,1995). It was through this affiliation that Binet made his most known contribution to the field, The Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. In 1899 the French government passed a law making it mandatory for children ages 6 to fourteen to attend school. As a result it was necessary to provide education for all children including those who were mentally retarded. The government then appointed a commission for the retarded. As the president of the Society, Alfred Binet was asked to head the commission. The commission was required to create a mechanism to identify those students who would be classified as retarded and recommended for a special program. This was the impetus that Binet needed to activate the research he had been conducting. Along with his doctoral student protégée, Theordore Simon, Binet designed the Binet - Simon scale to make this assessment. The Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale The Binet-Simon Scale was created to establish the differences that separate the normal child from the abnormal child and to measure these differences. “Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded.(Binet and Simon, 1980 reprint). It is interesting to note that Binet specifically added that, “we should therefore , study his condition at the time and that only….. We shall limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard to his present mental state. Over the next six years of Binet’s life, he and Simon continued to refine and revise the scale. The general structure of the scale is simple and easy to administer. It consists of a series of tests which increase in difficulty. Each set of tasks represent a higher mental level. Binet and Simon recommend that the tasks are administered to a child individually in a quiet room with a familiar person or relative as a silent observer. The scale is not to exceed twenty minutes as the subject may begin to experience fatigue (Binet and Simon,1980). The revised version of the scale has included tests for older children and adults. Today, an adopted version of the test called the Binet –Stanford Intelligence Scale is used in the United States. It was Lewis Terman who in 1916 revised, renamed and published Binet and Simon’s original scale( reference). However, today the uses and purpose of the test differs greatly form the original intentions and philosophy of Binet on intelligence. Rather than explain the intelligence of an individual at the specific time, the test now provides a quantitative assessment which suggests a genetically determined general intelligence(reference) Wolf, in his biography of Alfred Binet states, “The scale, which has made Binet famous, was only an important incident in a much wider goal. His quest…….was to understand the nature of man.” (Wolf, 1961) Other Contributions to the Field of Psychology Binet’s extensive research lead him to the development of theories in three areas of great importance to the understanding of the nature of man and to the field of psychology. These theories include the understanding of intelligence, the understanding of development and the understanding of memory. In this section, Binet’s ideas on each of these areas will be presented. The Development of Intelligence Despite the complexity of intelligence and the difficulty in defining it, Binet focused on the importance of the use of judgment in intelligence. Siegler in his article , The Other Alfred Binet , quoted Binet as writing: In intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which is of the utmost importance for practical life. This faculty is judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one’s self to circumstances. To judge well, to comprehend well, to reason well, these are the essential activities of intelligence. A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment, but with good judgment he can never be either (Binet & Simon, 1905). (Parke et. al., 1994). This use of judgment therefore could affect the intelligent performance of an individual. Binet believed that intelligence could be enhanced within limits. He wrote: “Intelligence is malleable (within limits) rather than fixed, the social environment exercises a pervasive influence on it and that the development of intelligence proceeds at variable rates within as well as between individuals.” As a constructivists, Binet believed that intelligence is above all a faculty directed toward the external world and striving to reconstruct that world by means of the small fragments of it which we perceive(Parke et al., 1994). From his research and observations of his daughters, Binet noted the different aspects of judgment and the qualitative differences in thinking. Some of these aspects have been developed and are now integrated in our understanding of thinking. There are three aspects of judgment: direction which refers to the choice, adaptation refers to the appropriateness of the choice and criticism refers to the internal feedback. This idea closely resembles the idea of metacognition. Qualitative differences in thinking refer to the reflective and impulsive traits displayed by his daughters. This resembles the identification of different cognitive styles (Parke et al.,1994). Intelligence as we now know it through clinical research , the administration of intelligence tests and observation of children had initial recognition in the research of Alfred Binet and were later developed by psychologist who followed. The Understanding of Development Modern Ideas About Children, is one of the most intriguing and directly relevant writings of Binet (Parke et al., 1994). In this text Binet presents his perspective on cognitive development. These ideas present cognitive development as a constructive process. One learns to adapt to the physical and social worlds through the cognitive process. Children assimilate new experiences to existing ways of thinking. Many of Binet’s ideas resemble those later presented by Jean Piaget. Ideas such as the importance of play in the development of children, constructivism, the value of the interpretation of errors made by the subjects and assimilation of new knowledge were later developed further by Piaget. In the article, The Perception of lengths and Numbers in some Small Children, Binet using his two daughters as subjects, documents his recognition of the ability of the child to perceive numbers. He states that the perception of numbers occurs within very restricted limits which are related to the age of the child. (Pollack & Brenner, 1969). Piaget later developed this idea and identified it as “conservation of number.” The Understanding of Memory Binet made many insightful di...