{"agent_id":"binet","agent_name":"Alfred Binet","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?","topic":"What the scale measures","question":"Is the intelligence test a diagnostic tool for helping children, or a measure of fixed innate intelligence?","position":"I built the scale for a single, practical purpose: to identify, among schoolchildren, those who could not follow ordinary instruction and needed special help. It is a graded series of tasks, ordered by difficulty and calibrated against what normal children of each age can do, so that we may say where a given child stands. That is all it is, and it is a great deal. What it is not is a measuring-rod of some fixed, innate quantity of intelligence stamped in a child at birth. The scale measures a present state, a performance here and now, which is the product of the child's nature and of everything that has acted upon it — its schooling, its home, its health, its habits of attention. To read a low result as the verdict of a permanent and unalterable incapacity is to abuse the instrument and to wrong the child. I devised a diagnosis in order to prescribe a remedy, not a sentence. The number tells us which children need our help; it does not tell us that our help is useless.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"I built the scale for a single, practical purpose: to identify, among schoolchildren, those who could not follow ordinary instruction and needed special help.","n":[1]},{"t":"It is a graded series of tasks, ordered by difficulty and calibrated against what normal children of each age can do, so that we may say where a given child stands.","n":[]},{"t":"That is all it is, and it is a great deal.","n":[]}],[{"t":"What it is not is a measuring-rod of some fixed, innate quantity of intelligence stamped in a child at birth.","n":[]},{"t":"The scale measures a present state, a performance here and now, which is the product of the child's nature and of everything that has acted upon it — its schooling, its home, its health, its habits of attention.","n":[2]},{"t":"To read a low result as the verdict of a permanent and unalterable incapacity is to abuse the instrument and to wrong the child.","n":[]}],[{"t":"I devised a diagnosis in order to prescribe a remedy, not a sentence.","n":[]},{"t":"The number tells us which children need our help; it does not tell us that our help is useless.","n":[3,4]}]],"texts":"The Development of Intelligence in Children (1916 English translation of the 1905-1911 Binet-Simon papers — the scale, its purpose, and its stated limits). Reception: Henry Goddard's use of the scale to identify the 'feeble-minded' and support segregation; Lewis Terman's Stanford-Binet and the IQ; the hereditarian and eugenic testing movement; Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which contrasts Binet's intent with the reification by his American heirs.","works":["The Development of Intelligence in Children (1916 English translation of the 1905-1911 Binet-Simon papers — the scale, its purpose, and its stated limits)"],"reception":"Henry Goddard's use of the scale to identify the 'feeble-minded' and support segregation; Lewis Terman's Stanford-Binet and the IQ; the hereditarian and eugenic testing movement; Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which contrasts Binet's intent with the reification by his American heirs.","status":"Binet's own conception — the scale as a practical, individual, diagnostic instrument measuring present performance, not fixed innate capacity — is well documented and is now the basis of his rehabilitation against the tradition that claimed him. That tradition, built by Goddard and Terman, reconceived the test as a measure of a fixed, largely hereditary, unitary intelligence quotient and put it to hereditarian, tracking, immigration- restriction, and eugenic uses that ran directly against Binet's stated views; Gould's Mismeasure of Man made the contrast canonical. The modern science of intelligence finds measured cognitive ability to be substantially heritable within groups yet also environmentally responsive and educable, and holds that a test score is a performance measure, not a fixed essence — a picture much closer to Binet's cautious diagnostic conception than to the reified IQ of his heirs.","era":"1857-1911","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Mentally Defective Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"This is very useful in practice. We have stated that the scale of reading was founded on experiments made by M. Vaney at the end of the school year. We have modified it slightly in consequence of experiments made by ourselves in February. It may be of interest to give here the table arranged by M. Vaney. It has been arranged not by age, but by class.","label":"Mentally Defective Children"},{"n":2,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Royer, interne of M. Bourneville, who took upon himself to inveigh against our last booI(, Lea Enfants Anormaux. 266 DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE Let US show in what practical manner one ought to utiHze our scale. Two cases are to be distinguished: the backward adult and the backward child. Let us begin with the simpler of these cases which is the first.","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"},{"n":3,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"But we are of the opinion that the most valuable use of our scale will not be its application to the normal pupils, but rather to those of inferior grades of intelligence. It is well known, as we have often affirmed, that the alienists are not agreed on the definitions of the words idiot, imbecile and moron. There are as many definitions as writers.","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"},{"n":4,"work":"The Development of Intelligence in Children","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Lay, who is nine years old, is four years behind, and has a five year development; she is plainly in the class of imbecility. It is understood that these diagnoses apply only to the present moment. One who is imbecile today, may by the progress of age become a moron, or on the contrary remain an imbecile all his life. One knows nothing of that; the prognosis is reserved.","label":"The Development of Intelligence in Children"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"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":"measuring-the-mind","label":"Measuring the mind: should psychology study the higher, complex mental operations rather than elementary sensations and reaction times?"},{"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?"}]}