Research Paper
Alfred Binet
The College of the Bahamas
September 13th, 2012

Alfred Binet, was born in Nice, France on July 11th 1957. His mother was an artist and his father a physician. Today. He has became a well-known psychologist in history. Alfred Binet's most important accomplishment was getting other psychologists interested in the normal human mind and what it's capable of. Other psychologists during that time-period were far more interested in the mind of the mentally handicapped and brain sizes.
After his parent's divorce, He later moved to Paris with his mother. He received his tertiary education at Lycee Louis -le-Grand. He graduated from law school in 1878, Alfred Binet had first planned to follow his father’s footsteps in the medical field and so he enrolled in medical school. Alfred Binet decided to become a lawyer even though he was not satisfied with his choice.
After studying science at Sorbonne, he became literate in psychology by reading works by individuals such as Charles Darwin and John Stuart Mills. Immediately afterwards, he began working at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris under the guidance of John-Martin Charcot. Later he moved to a position at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology where he was the associate director and researcher. In 1894, he was then made director of the laboratory. He related with the associationism theory suggested by J.S. Mills.
In 1884, He met and married Laure Balbiani. They produced two daughters- Armande & Marguerite whom he began conducting observations and researching cognitive procedures. This was done before he had even made the decision to become involved in intelligence and testing. (Wolfe, p.7)
Alfred Binet came to the conclusion that there were several categories of intelligence by observing his daughters and seeing that they had differences in the way they thought and solved problems given a stimuli. Alfred Binet's work was a precursor to some of Piaget's work with child psychology It was at this point, that Binet "came to realize that individual differences had to be systematically explored before one could determine laws which would apply to all people"(Pollack,p.xii). In 1904, Binet became a member of a Commission for child psychology. This group specialized in noting and finding the differences in normal children versus children with special needs. During this time, Binet and his colleague psychiatrist Theodore Simon were able to develop the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. The main goal was not for this to be used as an intelligence test, but to be used to classify individuals as normal or needing special help.
Thanks to this scale, special children were no longer categorized as morons (mildest), imbeciles (moderate) and idiots (most severely deficient). “Binet and Simon, in creating what historically is known as the Binet-Simon Scale, comprised a variety of tasks they thought were representative of typical children's abilities at various ages. This task-selection process was based on their many years of observing children in natural settings. They then tested their measurement on a sample of fifty children, ten children per five age groups. The children selected for their study were identified by their school teachers as being average for their age. The purpose of this scale of normal functioning, which would later be revised twice using more stringent standards, was to compare children's mental abilities relative to those of their normal peers (Siegler, 1992).
This test included vocabulary, memory, common knowledge and other cognitive abilities. In 1908, Binet and Simon revised the test and the decision was made on which answers were deemed as average.
So he was able to differentiate between the chronological age and the mental age of a child. According to Binet, “A child's mental age was determined by estimating a child's intelligence through comparison with the scores of average children of the same age”. 1911, Binet and Simon were able to release there last publication of the test before his death in Paris on October 18, 1911. As you can see if it wasn't for Alfred Binet we wouldn't have Intelligence quotients (IQ) tests the way they are today. While they aren't exactly perfect, because there is still biasness, it is still a basic framework of human cognitive ability. Although Binet's tests were very groundbreaking. It is my opinion that due to the fact that there are several factors, which have the ability to influence how a person will do on a test. Whether it be biasness in the test itself, or maybe even external distractions that can occur during test-taking. I do, however support his belief that people can be intelligent in several different ways, not just in the ways that can be seen during tests.