Two kinds of mental test in the 1890s
The programme, faculty by faculty
The paper gave explicit directions for each area. Where the specific 1895 tasks are documented, they're listed. The rest are described as the paper defined them.2,3
- 1Memory▶ TRY BELOWRecall in several forms, chosen partly for its forensic importance to the value of testimony.2Geometric shape from memoryA sentenceMusical notesA colour12 objects
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- 4
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- 6SuggestibilityHow easily a person's report is swayed by suggestion. One procedure used the names of eight perfumes.2Eight perfume names
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- 10
Read a short story once, then answer six questions
In Binet and Henri's memory studies, children recalled general ideas better than exact words. The gap widened with delay, and the more central an idea, the more likely it was remembered.4 Three questions below test the gist and three test the exact wording.
An original story written for this page, in the style of the short prose passages used in the programme. It isn't one of Binet and Henri's texts, and there are no norms. Answers stay in your browser.
1899: seven Cornell students
Stella Sharp, a Cornell graduate student, gave the tests to seven fellow psychology students. She found little meaningful pattern, and subtests meant to measure the same ability didn't agree with each other.4 Binet's own results were similarly disappointing.4
Still, Sharp's report argued that complex processes were worth more than elementary ones. Together with Wissler's 1901 result, it helped end the sensorimotor programme.10
From the programme to the scale
References
- [1]Binet, A., & Henri, V. (1895). La psychologie individuelle. L'Année psychologique, 2, 411–465. Persée.persee.fr
- [2]Nicolas, S., Coubart, A., & Lubart, T. (2014). The program of individual psychology (1895–1896) by Alfred Binet and Victor Henri. L'Année psychologique, 114, 5–60. Cairn.cairn.info
- [3]Nicolas, Coubart & Lubart (2014), abstract. ResearchGate.researchgate.net
- [4]Alfred Binet. Encyclopedia.com (Gale biographies).encyclopedia.com
- [5]Crump, M. Cognition, Chapter 4: Intelligence testing. CrumpLab open textbook.crumplab.com
- [6]Mülberger, A. (2017). Mental association: testing individual differences before Binet. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
- [7]Reiss-Sorokin, O. (2026). 'Intelligence' before 'intelligence tests': Alfred Binet's experiments on his daughters, 1890–1903. History of the Human Sciences.journals.sagepub.com
- [8]Wikipedia contributors. Alfred Binet (accessed 1 Oct 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [9]Nicolas, S. (2015). Psychology in French academic publishing in the late nineteenth century: Alfred Binet, editorial director at the Schleicher publishing house. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
- [10]Wasserman, J. D., & Kaufman, A. S. A history of mental ability tests and theories (in press, 2013, PDF).johndwasserman.com
Related historical tests
Cattell's ten tests timed and measured the senses. Binet and Henri argued the real differences between people lay in higher processes, and built their programme around those instead.
Ten years later Binet and Simon turned judgement, memory and comprehension tasks into a practical scale for schoolchildren, graded by age. Several 1905 items test memory for designs and figures, much as the 1895 programme proposed.
Two years later Ebbinghaus proposed a sentence-completion task for schoolchildren. It was another early step away from the senses and towards complex verbal work.
Kraepelin, trained in Wundt's laboratory, studied sustained work with simple timed additions. Binet and Henri chose complex faculties over simple repeated tasks.
Galton's London laboratory measured sensory acuity and reflexes in thousands of visitors. The 1895 programme was built on the opposite assumption about where intelligence shows itself.