In July of 1905, the first version of the Simon-Scale of intelligence was published in L’Annee Psychologique. Up until this point, there was no reliable standardized test for intelligence in existence; except for the Western world, the test was not widely accepted or used until after Binet’s death, not until the late 1920’s for France. The development of this test is what Binet is most recognized for today, as it was able to establish a “progressive metric scale of intelligence”. The test was created within only a few weeks, consisting of 5 subtests and 25 abstract questions that had been based on fifteen years of Binet’s research; certain sections, including the test which measured short-term memory and produced by Jacobs in 1887, were directly taken from other studies. The sample size for testing the validity of the original Binet-Simon scale only consisted of 50 children. It was also the first intelligence test to arrange the questions in order of ascending difficulty; this concept is still used in the current versions of the Standford-Binet scale being used today. Many of the subtests as well as specific questions in… Read More

In 1897, with the help of Edouard-Gerard Balbiani, an embryologist, Binet founded and directed Intermediaire des Biologistes. Organe International de Zoologie, Botanique, Physiologie et Psychologie. The journal was not affiliated with any school, and was created with the purpose of creating just another outlet of communication for psychologists. In 1899, Theodore Simon and Henri Pieron joined the lab, and began working under Binet at Sorbonne. Simon provided many needed test subjects and helped Binet continue building upon the work that had been started with “Individual Psychology”. Around this time, Binet joined the La Societe Libre Pour l’Etude Psychologique de l’Enfant (SLEPE), the free society for the psychological study of the child, which was a group of teachers, psychologists, and school administrators that were all involved in current educational issues. By 1902, he became its president. In 1903, Binet published his book, L’Etude Experimentale de l’Intelligence, which explained certain exercises that he used and noted their results. Today, they are referred to as projective tests, which included: responses to ink blots, imaginative storytelling in response to stimuli, sentence-completion questionnaires. It is worth noting that the inkblot tests that… Read More

For the next year after, Binet was unaffiliated with any institution, and instead conducted home experiments on his two daughters, using various puzzles and mental tests. In 1891, he met someone at the Rouen train station by the name of Henri-Etienne Beaunis, who happened to be the director of France’s first experimental psychology lab, called the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at Sorbonne. Soon after, Binet volunteered to work as an unpaid assistant, under the direction of Beaunis. Only a year later, Binet became deputy director of the laboratory; By 1893, he started issuing a newsletter a newsletter at the lab, Bulletin des Travaux du Laboratoire de Psychologie Physiologique. In 1894, Binet replaced Beaunis and gained the title of director, which was still an unpaid position. In the same year, he founded the first French psychological journal called L’Annee psychologiqu, and he also earned a Ph.D. in natural science; his dissertation being on the anatomy and physiology of the sub-intestinal nervous system of insects. The L’Annee psychologiqu is focused on laboratory research, and still regularly issued as of today. As the director of his Sorbonne laboratory, Binet conducted… Read More

From 1883-1890, Binet was able to conduct his research at the hospital, by volunteering as an unpaid assistant of Charcot’s. In 1884, he married Laure Balbiani, the daughter of a well-known biologist who held professorship at the College de France. Together they had two daughters, Madeleine in 1885 and Alice in 1887. In 1886, Binet wrote a report on exterior perception, which he later won an award for at the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Also in 1886, he published his first book La Psychologie du raisonnement; and in 1887, another book called Le magnetisme animal. Etudes de psychologie experimentale, a book Binet helped write that focused on the psychic life of microorganisms, hypnosis and hysteria, was also published, in 1888. During his time at the hospital, and under the influence of Charcot,  They obtained the same results as Charcot had in his own research, and were from then on believers in its validity. Binet was considered by many an aggressive proponent of Charcot’s grand hypnotisme; many believe this was due to the fact that Binet was offered his first position in the field of psychology… Read More

Alfred Binet has made significant contributions within the field of psychology, although most of his research did not gain the popularity it deserved. He is most recognized for his development of the first standardized intelligence test, even though for most of his career he was focused on many other areas.  The purpose of this paper is to explore the life of Alfred Binet up until his death, going into greater detail in many areas of his research, how he has contributed to today’s knowledge in the field of psychology, and why he is not as recognized as he should be for his discoveries. Binet was born in 1857 in Nice, France, and was the only child of wealthy parents; his father, Edoardo Binet, a physician, and his mother, Moina Allard, an artist. After his parents went through a divorce, he lived solely with his mother. At age 15 they both moved to Paris where he completed high school, and then went ahead and earned his law degree at the University of Paris, in 1878. He never ended up practicing law or trying to start a legal practice… Read More