Alfred Binet



Alfred Binet (July 8, 1857 – October 18, 1911), French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, the basis of today's IQ test.

Born in Nice, Binet was a French psychologist who published the first modern intelligence test, the Binet-Simon intelligence scale, in 1905. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum. Along with his collaborator Théodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his intelligence scale in 1908 and 1911, the last appearing just before his untimely death. A further refinement of the Binet-Simon scale was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman, from Stanford University, who incorporated the German psychologist William Stern's proposal that an individual's intelligence level be measured as an intelligence quotient (I.Q.). Terman's test, which he named the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale formed the basis for one of the modern intelligence tests still commonly used today. They are all colloquially known as IQ tests.

Binet and Chess
In 1894, Binet conducted one of the first psychological studies into chess. It investigated the cognitive facilities of chess masters. Binet hypothesized that chess depends upon the phenomenological qualities of visual memory but after studying the reports by master participants, it was concluded that memory was only part of the chain of cognition involved in the game process. The players were blindfolded and required to play the game from memory. It was found that only masters were able to play successfully without seeing the board for a second time and that amateur or intermediate players found it to be an impossible task. It was further concluded that experience, imagination and memories of abstract and concrete varieties were required in grand master chess. The line of psychological chess research was followed up in the 1950s by Reuben Fine and in the 1960s by Adriaan de Groot.

Publications

 * La psychologie du raisonnement; Recherches expérimentales par l'hypnotisme (1886; English translation, 1899), his first book.
 * Perception intérieure (1887).
 * Etudes de psychologie expérimentale (1888).
 * Les altérations de la personnalité (1892; English translation, 1896).
 * Introduction à la psychologie expérimentale (1894; with co-authors).
 * On Double Consciousness (1896).
 * La fatigue intellectuelle (1898; with co-author Henri).
 * La Suggestibilité (1900).
 * Etude expérimentale de l'intelligence (1903).
 * L'âme et le corps (1905).
 * Les révélations de l'écriture d'après un contrôle scientifique (1906).
 * Les enfants anormaux (1907; with co-author Simon).
 * Les idées sur les enfants (1900).

He was one of the editors of L'année psychologique, a yearly volume comprising original articles and  reviews of the progress of psychology.