Binet-Simon Test of Mental Levels

1905

Alfred Binet (1857–1911), Théodore Simon (1872–1961)

By the early twentieth century, France had fallen behind its archrival Germany in industrial production. To catch up, pressure was exerted on schools to do a better job educating French children. The teachers complained, however, that classes were too large and that too many “subnormal” children were mixed in with those of normal ability.

To help them solve this problem, the French government turned to Alfred Binet, a psychologist known for his work with children. Binet’s first attempt to develop tests failed. He was then joined by Théodore Simon, a young physician who worked at a large institution for the mentally impaired. Binet and Simon could now compare the results of their tests with children of both average and below-average ability.

Binet had an important insight: although both groups of children were able to pass the same kinds of tests, the normal children did so at a younger age than the subnormal children. With this insight, Binet and Simon developed a set of thirty tasks of increasing levels of difficulty, starting with very simple tasks, such as shaking hands with the tester, up to very complex tasks that even the oldest children had difficulty with, such as defining abstract words. Children would then progress through the tests, stopping at the point where they could no longer pass. Their achievement would be noted and compared to the age corresponding to that level. This was referred to as the child’s “mental level.” Any child who fell two years or more behind his or her age peers in performance was identified as subnormal and could be placed in a class appropriate to his or her mental level.

The Binet-Simon test, first published in 1905, underwent revisions in 1908 and 1911, and it was adapted for use in America in 1916. Binet continued to believe that intelligence was not fixed and that a test such as his should not be used to predict future performance: it was only a snapshot in time.

SEE ALSO Psychological Tests (1890), Projective Tests (1921), Thematic Apperception Test (1935), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (1940)

Alfred Binet.

Collage of materials from a 1930s edition of the Stanford-Binet Test.