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Article: Intelligence Testing
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society
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Intelligence Testing
Treatments of modern measures of intelligence often begin with a discussion of the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857
–
1911). In 1905, Binet initiated the applied mental measurement movement when he introduced the first intelligence test. In response to a turn-of-the-century law in France requiring that children of subnormal mental ability be placed in special programs (rather than be expelled from school), Binet was called upon to design a test that could identify these children. Binet's first test consisted of thirty items, most of which required some degree of comprehension and reasoning. For example, one task required children to take sentences in ...