{"agent_id":"binet","agent_name":"Alfred Binet","slug":"measuring-the-mind","label":"Measuring the mind: should psychology study the higher, complex mental operations rather than elementary sensations and reaction times?","topic":"Measuring the mind","question":"Should psychology study the higher, complex mental operations rather than elementary sensations and reaction times?","position":"When others set out to measure the mind, they measured what was easiest to measure: the keenness of the senses, the speed of reaction, the strength of the grip — supposing that the fine intellect must be served by fine instruments. But when these sensory tests were tried against the one thing we wished to predict — the child's power to think, to learn, to succeed in school — they predicted nothing. I took the opposite road. If we wish to measure intelligence, we must set the mind its own proper work: to judge, to comprehend, to reason, to find the point of a story, to see the absurdity in a picture, to define, to compare, to complete a thought. These complex operations are what intelligence is; the elementary sensations are its raw material, not its measure. My scale is a graded ladder of such judgments, and it works because it asks of the child the very kind of thing that thinking is. To measure the higher faculties you must engage the higher faculties, not their sensory servants.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"When others set out to measure the mind, they measured what was easiest to measure: the keenness of the senses, the speed of reaction, the strength of the grip — supposing that the fine intellect must be served by fine instruments.","n":[]},{"t":"But when these sensory tests were tried against the one thing we wished to predict — the child's power to think, to learn, to succeed in school — they predicted nothing.","n":[]}],[{"t":"I took the opposite road.","n":[]},{"t":"If we wish to measure intelligence, we must set the mind its own proper work: to judge, to comprehend, to reason, to find the point of a story, to see the absurdity in a picture, to define, to compare, to complete a thought.","n":[]},{"t":"These complex operations are what intelligence is; the elementary sensations are its raw material, not its measure.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"My scale is a graded ladder of such judgments, and it works because it asks of the child the very kind of thing that thinking is.","n":[]},{"t":"To measure the higher faculties you must engage the higher faculties, not their sensory servants.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"The Development of Intelligence in Children (1916); the critiques of the sensory-measurement approach; L'Étude expérimentale de l'intelligence (1903). Reception: the failure of the Galton-Cattell sensory/reaction-time tests to predict achievement; the triumph of Binet's complex-judgment approach as the model for all later ability testing; the modern debate over what 'intelligence' the tests capture.","works":["The Development of Intelligence in Children (1916)","the critiques of the sensory-measurement approach","L'Étude expérimentale de l'intelligence (1903)"],"reception":"the failure of the Galton-Cattell sensory/reaction-time tests to predict achievement; the triumph of Binet's complex-judgment approach as the model for all later ability testing; the modern debate over what 'intelligence' the tests capture.","status":"This is one of Binet's most secure and consequential methodological contributions, now essentially uncontested in its core. The Galton- Cattell program of measuring intelligence through sensory acuity and reaction time failed empirically — the sensory tests did not predict academic or life achievement — while Binet's complex-judgment tasks did, and every subsequent intelligence and ability test follows his model of sampling higher-order cognitive performance rather than elementary sensation. The live modern debate is not whether to measure complex judgment (Binet won that) but exactly what construct the judgment tasks capture and how unitary it is — the g-factor and multiple-intelligences discussions that came after him.","era":"1857-1911","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Should we therefore bring into our examination the measure of sensation after the manner of the psycho-physicists? Should we put to the test all of his psychological processes? A slight reflection has shown us that this would indeed be wasted time. It seems to us that in intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which, is of the utmost importance for practical life.","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"},{"n":2,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Here are some of them; weighing only one of the boxes and declaring that it is the heavier; putting the two boxes side by side in the same hand and saying that one of them is heavier than the other (in this case the weighing, although much more difficult, is not impossible); finally, placing the two boxes on top of each other and in the same hand; this again is more imperfect as a means of weigh- ing but it is…","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"},{"n":3,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"In what does it really consist? It consists in part, in the increase of the faculty of com- prehending and of judging, at least this is probable; a child under- stands less and judges with less penetration than an adult; it con- sists also in the increase of acquisitions of every sort. But these are perhaps secondary characteristics which one may lack with- out compromising his maturity.","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"},{"n":4,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Now the vocabulary of a language is slowly assimilated; it demands a long experience which cannot be improvised. In a last group we should place the tests which are remarkable for the frequency of failures even when the pupil is older than the age to which these questions normally belong.","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"},{"n":5,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"If by this labor we have succeeded in showing the necessity for a thorough investigation conducted after this plan, our time has not been lost. But we are far from flattering our- selves that we have inaugurated a reform. Reforms in France do not succeed except through politics, and we cannot readily im- agine a secretary of state busying himself with a question of this kind.","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"what-the-scale-measures","label":"What the scale measures: is the intelligence test a diagnostic tool for helping children, or a measure of fixed innate intelligence?"},{"slug":"the-malleability-of-intelligence","label":"The malleability of intelligence: can intelligence be increased by training, against the 'brutal pessimism' of a fixed capacity?"},{"slug":"suggestion-and-the-divided-self","label":"Suggestion and the divided self: how far can hypnosis, hysteria, and double consciousness be trusted, and what did the Salpêtrière teach about experimental error?"},{"slug":"the-experimental-study-of-thought","label":"The experimental study of thought: can the higher operations of reasoning and imagination be studied by controlled introspection?"}]}