Binet, Alfred (älfrĕd` bēnā`), 1857–1911, French psychologist. From 1894 he was director of the psychology laboratory at the Sorbonne. He is known for his research and innovation in testing human intelligence. With Théodore Simon he devised (1905–11) a series of tests that, with revisions, came into wide use in schools, industries, and the army. The Stanford, the Herring, and the Kuhlmann are important revisions. Binet and Simon wrote Les Enfants anormaux (1907, tr. Mentally Defective Children, 1914). Most of his writings were published in Année psychologique, a journal that he founded in 1895.

Bibliography

See study by T. H. Wolf (1973).

Binet, Alfred

(born July 8, 1857, Nice, France—died Oct. 18, 1911, Paris) French psychologist. His interest in Jean-Martin Charcot's work on hypnosis prompted him to abandon a law career and study medicine at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (1878–91). He served as director of a research laboratory at the Sorbonne (1895–1911). A major figure in the development of experimental psychology in France, he founded L'Année Psychologique, the first French journal on psychology, in 1895. He developed experimental techniques to measure reasoning ability; between 1905 and 1911 he and Theodore Simon developed influential scales for the measurement of intelligence of children. His works include Experimental Study of Intelligence (1903) and A Method of Measuring the Development of the Intelligence of Young Children (1915).