Technology and work

Abstract

The first 'modern' intelligence test • The first 'modern' intelligence test was devised in 1908, when the School Board in Paris asked Alfred Binet to help screen out children who might become 'backward' in school, so that special provision could be arranged. Binet simply devised dozens of small school-type tasks-factual information, sentence comprehension, mental arithmetic, arranging objects by size and so on-and, by trial and error, selected those whose performance corresponded with school attainment and age and discarded the rest. • Binet himself rejected the idea that he was measuring a 'fixed, innate' intelligence, the 'Binet method' quickly became the standard procedure for IQ test construction. • For example, the most popular test, the Stanford-Binet, originated from translations of Binet's items with the addition of forty or so others.