ALFRED BINET

(1857 1911)

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
l'Etude Psychologique de l'Enfant (the Free Society
Psychological Study of the Child)

for the

Libre pour

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
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

Origins of Intelligence Testing

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) was a French

psychologist who is credited with inventing the
first reliable intelligence test
Binet's work on intelligence began in 1904
when the French government commissioned
him to develop a test that would identify
learning disabilities and other academic
weaknesses in grade school students
Binet, with the help of a colleague named
Theodore Simon, took up the daunting task of
trying to measure the mental abilities of
students.
By 1905, Binet and Simon developed their
first in a series of tests designed to measure
intelligence.
It was simply called the Binet-Simon Scale.

BINET- SIMON SCALE

The scale included 30 tasks that were progressive
in their difficulty.
This test was first given to students in Paris and
acted as the reference point for future versions of the
intelligence test
Based upon his research, he believed that
intellectual development was a process that occurred
over time. In other words, intelligence was not fixed
at birth and simply a matter of genetics but was
flexible and could be influenced by the environment
to which a child was exposed.
1908, Binet and Simon published a revised 58items scale that incorporated the concept of mental
level.
In 1911, a third revision of the Binet- simon scale
appeared
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.

William Stern (18711938): The Individual Behind the

Intelligence Quotient

In 1912 Stern divided mental age by

the actual, chronological age of the
person taking the test.
In 1916, Terman suggest multiplying
the intelligence quotient by 100 to
remove fractions.
thus was born the concept of IQ

TIMELINE OF BINET- SIMON SCALE

April

1905: Development of Binet-Simon

Test announced at a conference in Rome
June 1905: Binet-Simon Intelligence Test
introduced
1908 and 1911: New Versions of BinetSimon Intelligence Test
1916: Stanford-Binet First Edition by
Terman
1937: Second Edition by Terman and
Merrill
1973: Third Edition by Merrill
1986: Fourth Edition by Thorndike,
Hagen, and Sattler
2003: Fifth Edition by Roid