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Alfred Binet Facts & Worksheets

Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet–Simon test.

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Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet–Simon test. In 1905, the French Ministry of Education asked psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a method that would determine which students did not learn effectively from regular classroom instruction.

See the fact file below for more information on the Alfred Binet or alternatively, you can download our 19-page Alfred Binet worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

  • Binet was born in July 1857, in Nice, France. His father was a physician and his mother was an artist. His parents were divorced when he was young so he was mostly raised by his mother.
  • He received several awards for his extraordinary skills in literary composition and translation at the prestigious Louis-le-Grand school at the age of fifteen.
  • Law and medicine were his favorite subjects. He obtained a degree in law but chose not to pursue a law career. In his mid-twenties, Binet educated himself by reading psychology books at the National Library in Paris.
  • In the National Library in Paris, he studied the developments and trends in psychology.
  • Binet was inspired by the works of John Stuart Mill and Theodule Ribot, that increased his enthusiasm for sensory and associationistic psychology.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

  • In the early 1880s, Binet met Jean-Martin Charcot, a neurologist at the Salpêtrière Hospital and was fascinated by his work.
  • By his legal training, Binet worked at the hospital and extensively researched and published work on hypnosis and hysteria. While stating a controversial theory, he gradually apprehended the nature of suggestibility on psychological experimentation.
  • Binet married Laure Balbiani in 1884. Balbiani is the daughter of the famous embryologist Edouard-Gérard Balbiani. They had two daughters, Madeleine and Alice, who were born two years apart.
  • In 1890 Binet yielded his position at the Salpêtrière hospital. He then decided to give his time to his daughters.
  • He carried out home experiments with his two children and observed their behavior and responses in a methodical way.
  • Binet published three papers describing his observations, justifying experiments that dealt with individual differences and the measuring of intelligence.
  • Binet volunteered at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Sorbonne in 1892. Three years later, he was made director, a position he held until his death.
  • He worked with Theodore Simon and Henry Heaunis to construct the psychology journal “L’Année Psychologique.” This journal is widely considered to be one of the most important contributions in the history of psychology.
  • Victor Henri, a French physical chemist, briefly helped Binet with the investigations of visual memory and research regarding individual psychology.
  • Binet became a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child. He also served on a French Commission for the Education of Retarded Children. In 1903, Binet’s methods were published in the book “L’Etude experimentale de l’intelligence” translated meaning “The Experimental Study of Intelligence.”
  • Binet’s experimental research also involved schoolchildren. In 1905, Binet, together with Theodore Simon, his research assistant, introduced tests for measuring the intelligence of children. The test involved thirty tasks of increasing difficulty. These tests would represent the mental milestones of a developing child. Numerous children were then tested resulting in an average score for a particular age.

BINET AND CHESS

  • Binet had done a sequence of experiments to see how good chess players played when blindfolded.
  • He found that only some of the master chess players could play from memory and a few could play multiple games simultaneously without looking at the boards.
  • To recall the positions of the pieces on the boards, some players visualized exact replicas of specific chess sets, while others visualized an abstract schema of the game.
  • Binet concluded that exceptional feats of memory such as blind chess playing could take a variation of mnemonic forms. He recounted his experiments in a book entitled Psychologie des grands calculateurs et joueurs en echec.

DEATH

  • In 1908, a second revision of the Binet-Simon scale was published and a third revision in 1911, just before his death. Binet died on October 18, 1911.
  • Since his death, many people have honored Binet in many ways, but two of these stand out. In 1917, the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child, of which Binet became a member in 1899 and which prompted his development of the intelligence tests, changed their name to La Société Alfred Binet, in memory of the renowned psychologist.
  • The second honor was when the journal Science 84 picked the Binet-Simon scale as one of twenty of the century’s most significant developments or discoveries.

Alfred Binet Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Alfred Binet across 19 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Alfred Binet worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Alfred Binet who was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet–Simon test. In 1905, the French Ministry of Education asked psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a method that would determine which students did not learn effectively from regular classroom instruction.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Alfred Binet Facts
  • The Well-known Binet
  • Biographical Profile
  • Binet’s Findings
  • Studies of AB
  • Binet’s Chess
  • Good or Trash
  • Check My List
  • IQ Score
  • Binet-Simon Test
  • Famous Psychologist

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