In what ways did Binet’s approach to intelligence testing differ from Galton’s and Cattell’s?
Alfred Binet was a psychologist. Binet and Simon started forming tests that could sort between intellectually normal and retarded children. In the year 1905, they discovered a way to differentiate between normal and mentally deficient children. They discovered a scale known as the Binet-Simon scale of intelligence. It consisted of 30 tests, with 3 of them measuring motor development and the rest 27 of them measuring the cognitive abilities of the child.
Sir Francis Galton was a famous psychologist and had a number of important contributions to Psychology, ranging from the measurement of intelligence to eugenics to the concept of co-relation, nature-nurture controversy, and mental imagery. He devised the world’s first Word Association test and Anthropometry laboratories.
James McKeen Cattell was a psychologist and became interested in measuring the intelligence of humans. He later moved on to studying several aspects of applied psychology.
Galton, Cattell and Binet tried to measure human intelligence. Galton and Cattell were more interested in finding what people had in common, whereas Binet focused on what made people different. Binet’s approach to intelligence testing differed from Galton and Cattell because Binet wanted to study the variables on which individuals differ from each other regarding intellect.
Along with his assistant Victor Henri, Binet wrote an article in the year 1896 called “Individual Psychology”. In the article, the list of variables was jotted down on which individuals vary from each other intellectually. Binet aimed at measuring these individual differences and hoped that an individual could be evaluated based on these findings.
The Binet-Simon scale of intelligence, formed during 1905, aimed at measuring the intellectual age of children. Binet believed that though children inherit intelligence from their parents’, the environment also played a major role. He believed that the intellectual capability of every child could rise, if they were properly nurtured and cared for.