Biography Of Alfred Binet The Psychologist - Research Paper Example

Thus, he began studying the natural sciences with a particular emphasis in neurology. In 1891, Binet took over as the director of the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology in Sorbonne. Specifically, Binet was interested in the development of children, specifically in the field of the developing intelligence (“Binet, Alfred). Intelligence, to this day, is still a highly debated field. The debate focuses on two main issues: defining what intelligence is and deciding whether it is an inherently biological feature or whether the environment defines it.

Society has attempted to figure out ways to quantify the measure of one’s intelligence and this started with Binet. At first, Binet was interested in developing tests in which they would be used to see whether a child was suffering from a mental disability or not. This started when he was asked to join the Free Society for the Psychological Study of Children. His goal was to take this study and use a highly scientific and quantitative method in order to quantify this construct of intelligence.

This use of quantifiable measurements lead to Binet creating the first types of intelligence tests, making him the father of all the modern intelligence tests that are used today to measure constructs from IQ to scholastic achievement. At the forefront of his intelligence tests, a student under the name of Theodore Simon appointed himself as Binet’s assistant in the study of childhood intelligence. They developed a scale of intelligence, which became famously known as the Binet-Simon scale.

The Binet-Simon scale was the first created by Binet and Simon that was a psychological test in order to gauge a child’s intelligence level. The scale consisted of a number of tests, which would require the child to demonstrate different ways of thinking and problem solving. Some of these tests were aimed at measuring the child’s perception in response to a stimulus such as light, auditory, and tactile responses. Other tests worked on a recognition principle using the recognition of food as the construct.

This would involve presenting the food with an object that wasn’t food, but was similar in the dimensions, appearance, etc. to see whether or not the child would be able to tell a difference. In addition, there were tests that were designed to gauge how effectively the child’s motor function and coordination worked through the execution of simple movements through commands. Lastly, they would test what today could be considered general intelligence in that it involved the recognition and statement of what objects were.

This was accomplished through the use of physical objects, pictures, etc. which required not only for the child to recognize and process what it was, but be able to tell the tester verbally what they were seeing. Comparison tests were also used in order to determine whether the child could discriminate against objects, which were similar, but different. Tests in attention, suggestibility, memory, and problem solving were also conducted in order to determine the child’s intellectual level (Binet).

Binet was very thorough in his methods as he wanted to use a scientific method as well as be able to quantify his data. However, he was a self-learned psychologists which in the end gave him a grave disadvantage when we was developing theories regarding intelligence. Thus, many of his scales were