A ministry question, answered in six months
In 1904 France set up a ministerial commission on special education. It had two questions for mass schooling: how to diagnose mental delay, and how to educate "abnormal" children. Binet published his method six months later.1
The aim was to tell apart children held back by a poor environment or poor schooling from those with an intellectual deficit.1 He had sharply criticised the asylum doctors of his day for their vague, unscientific diagnostic criteria.1 A teachers' outcry in 1904 had put the question to the Minister of Public Instruction.3
« un peu plus d'intelligence, c'est l'imbécile ; un peu moins, c'est l'idiot. »
Five rungs of the 1905 scale
The scale ranked its thirty tasks from easiest to hardest. How far up a child got was the result.
Screen adaptations of five of the thirty tasks, with our own content, timings and pass rules. Binet's tasks were spoken by an examiner, and his children were compared with children, not adults. There's no score or IQ here.
All thirty, in order
Binet defined intelligence broadly, as adapting to new circumstances, judging well, understanding language and reasoning. He scaled the items by difficulty.2 Item names follow the 1916 English translation.6 The five you can try are marked ▶.
- 1Visual coordination (following a light)
- 2Grasping an object by touch
- 3Grasping an object by sight
- 4Recognising food
- 5Seeking food behind an obstacle
- 6Executing simple commands and imitating gestures
- 7Verbal knowledge of objects
- 8Verbal knowledge of pictures
- 9Naming objects designated in a picture
- 10▶ Comparing two lines of unequal length
- 11Repeating three spoken digits
- 12Comparing two weights
- 13Suggestibility
- 14Defining familiar objects
- 15Repeating a 15-word sentence
- 16Differences between familiar objects
- 17Memory for pictures
- 18Drawing a design from memory
- 19▶ Repeating a longer series of digits
- 20Similarities between familiar objects
- 21▶ Rapid comparison of lines
- 22Arranging five weights in order
- 23Finding the missing weight
- 24Finding rhymes
- 25▶ Filling gaps in sentences
- 26Building a sentence from three words
- 27Answering abstract questions
- 28▶ Reversing the hands of a clock
- 29Paper cutting (folded-paper puzzle)
- 30Defining abstract terms
From a list to a mental level
References
- [1]Cognet, G. (2011). Les trois vies du Binet-Simon: Binet-Simon, Nemi, Nemi-2. Recherches & éducations, 5. OpenEdition Journals.journals.openedition.org
- [2]Binet's tests. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Psychology. SAGE Knowledge.sk.sagepub.com
- [3]Wikipedia contributors. Binet–Simon Intelligence Test (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [4]Wikipedia contributors. Théodore Simon (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [5]Les théories de l'intelligence (training document DCL1). ECPA / Pearson Clinical France (PDF).pearsonclinical.fr
- [6]Binet, A., & Simon, Th. (1905/1916). New methods for the diagnosis of the intellectual level of subnormals (trans. E. S. Kite). Classics in the History of Psychology.psychclassics.yorku.ca
Related historical tests
Ten years earlier, Binet and Henri set out to test higher faculties such as memory, comprehension and suggestibility. Several of those ideas return here as short items, including memory for designs and suggestibility.
Henry Goddard translated the scale for the Vineland Training School. His version spread it across the United States within a few years.
Lewis Terman revised and extended the scale at Stanford and reported results as an IQ. That brought a single number Binet himself never used.
Filling gaps in sentences, rung 25, echoes the completion method Ebbinghaus had used with Breslau schoolchildren eight years earlier.
Only the first few rungs of the 1905 scale test the senses. The rest are judgement, memory and language, the reverse of Cattell's sensorimotor battery.