Sir Francis died in 1911, after an incredibly productive life

Alfred Binet

Born July 11,1851 in Nice, France, Alfred was an only child. His mother, an artist, raised him herself after a divorce from his father, a physician.

He started studying medicine, but decided to study psychology on his own — being independently wealthy left him free to do what he pleased. He worked with the psychiatrist Charcot at La Salpetriere, where he studied hypnosis.

In 1891, he moved to Paris to study at the physiological-psychology lab at the Sorbonne, where he developed a variety of research interests, especially, of course, involving individual differences. In 1899, he and his graduate student, Theodore Simon (1873-1961) were commissioned by the French government to study retardation in the French schools, and to create a test to differentiated normal from retarded children.

After marriage, he began studying his own two daughters and testing them with Piaget-like tasks and other tests. This led to the publication of The Experimental Study of Intelligence in 1903.

In 1905, Binet and Simon came out with the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence, the first test permitting graduated, direct testing of intelligence. They expanded the test to normal children in 1908, and to adults in 1911.

Binet believed intelligence to be complex, with many factors, and not to be a simple, single entity. He didn't like the use of a single number developed by William Stern in 1911 — the intelligence quotient or IQ. He also believed that, though genetics may set upper limits on intelligence, most of us have plenty of room for improvement with the right kind of education.

He cautioned that his tests should be used with restraint: Even a child two years behind his age level may later prove to be brighter than most. He was afraid that IQ would prejudice teachers and parents, and that people would tend to view it as fixed and prematurely give up on kids who score low early on.

He suggested something he called mental orthopedics: Exercises in attention and thought that could help disadvantaged children, «learning how to learn».

Binet's fears were well founded. For example, Charles Spearman (1863-1945) introduced the idea that «general intelligence* (g) was real, unitary, and inherited.

Worse were the antics of Henry Goddard (1866-1957). He translated the Binet Simon test into English. He studied a family in New Jersey he named the Kal-likaks. Some were normal, but quite a few were «feeble-minded» (Goddard's term). He traced their genealogy to support the heredity position. Because he believed that there was a close connection between feeblemindedness and criminality, he recommended that states institute programs of sterilization of the feebleminded. 20 states passed such laws.

He also tested immigrants, at the request of the Immigration Service. His testers found 40 to 50% of immigrants feebleminded, and they were immediately deported. He also cited particular countries as being more feebleminded than others.

But testing and measuring are here to stay and are a significant part of the foundation of psychology.

Unit 2

History of psychology: Wilhelm Wundt and William James

Wilhelm Wundt and William James are usually thought of as the fathers of psychology, as well as the founders of psychology's first two great «schools». Although they were very different men, there are some parallels: Their lives overlap, for example, with Wilhelm Wundt born in 1832 and dying in 1920, while William James was born ten years later and died ten years earlier. Both have claims to having established the first psychology lab in 1875. And neither named his school. There are other commonalities as well, personal and philosophical.

Wilhelm Wundt

Wilhelm Wundt was born in the village of Neckerau in Baden, Germany on August 16, 1832. The son of a Lutheran pastor, he was a solitary and studious boy. He roomed with and was tutored by his fathers assistant, the vicar of the church. He was sent off to boarding school at 13, and the university at 19.

He studied medicine at Tubingen, Heidelberg, and Berlin, although interested more in the scientific aspect than in a medical career. In 1857, he was appointed dozent (instructor) at Heidelberg, where he lectured on physiology. From 1858 to 1864, he also served as an assistant to the famous physiologist Helmholtz, and studied the neurological and chemical stimulation of muscles.

In 1864, he became an assistant professor at Heidelberg. Three years later, he started a course he called physiological psychology, which focused on the border between physiology and psychology, i.e. the senses and reactions — an interest inspired by the work of Weber and Fechner. His lecture notes would eventually become his major work, the Principles of Physiological Psychology, which would be published in 1873 and 1874.

Like Fechner and many others at the time, Wundt accepted the Spinozan idea of psychophysical parallelism: Every physical event has a mental counterpart, and every mental event has a physical counterpart. Physiological psychology would presumably study the relationship between these «inner» and «outer» aspects, especially the relationship of stimuli and sensations.

We shouldn't see the term as reductionistic: He was in no way suggesting that we reduce psychological experiences to physiological explanations. But he did believe, like Fechner, that the availability of measurable stimuli (and reactions) could make psychological events available to something like experimental methodology in a way earlier philosophers such as Kant thought impossible.

The method that Wundt developed is experimental introspection: The researcher was to carefully observe some simple event — one that could be measured as to quality, intensity, or duration — and record his responses to variations of those events. (Note that in German philosophy at that time, sensations were considered psychological events, and therefore «internal* to the mind, even though the sensation is of something that is «outside» the mind. Hence what we might call observation was called by Wundt introspection).

To continue his story, Wundt went on to become chair of «inductive philosophy* at Zurich in 1874, and then professor of philosophy at Leipzig in 1875. It was there that he would stay and work for the next 45 years.

In 1875, a room was set aside for Wundt for demonstrations in what we now call sensation and perception. This is the same year that William James would set up a similar lab at Harvard. We can celebrate that year as the founding of experimental psychology.

In 1879, Wundt assisted his first graduate student as true psychological research — another milestone. In 1881, he started the joiirnal Philosophische Studien. In 1883, he began the first course to be titled experimental psychology. And in 1894, his efforts were rewarded with the official establishment of an «Institute for Experimental Psychology* at Leipzig — the first such in the world.

Wundt was known to everyone as a quiet, hard-working, and very methodical researcher, as well as a very good lecturer. The latter comment is from the standards of the day, which were considerably different from today's: He would go on in a low voice for a couple of hours at a time, without notes or audio-visual aides and without pausing for questions.

It is curious to note that during this same busy time period, Wundt also published four books in philosophy. Keep in mind that, at this time, psychology was not considered something separate from philosophy. In fact, Wundt rejected the idea when someone suggested it to him.

The studies conducted by Wundt and his now numerous students were mostly on sensation and perception, and of those, most concerned vision. In addition, there were studies on reaction time, attention, feelings, and associations. In all, he supervised 186 doctoral dissertations, most in psychology.

Among his better known students were Oswald Kiilpe and Hugo Munsterberg (whom James invited to teach at Harvard), as well as American students such as Hall («f a-ther» of developmental psychology in America), James McKeen Cattell, Lightner Witmer (founder of the first psychological clinic in the US), and Wundt's main interpreter to the English speaking world, E. B. Titchener.

Later in his career, Wundt became interested in social or cultural psychology. Contrary to what many believe, Wundt did not think that the experimental study of sensations was the be all and end all of psychology. In fact, he felt that that was only the surface, and additionally that most of psychology was not as amenable to experimental methods.

Instead, he felt that we had to approach cultural psychology through the products it produced — mythology, for example, cultural practices and rituals, literature and art.... He wrote a ten volume Volkerpsychologie, published between 1900 and 1920, which included the idea of stages of cultural development, from the primitive, to the totemic, through the age of heroes and gods, to the age of modern man.