Martin O
Départment des sciences sociales, Faculté des sciences humaines et sociales de la Sorbonne, Université Paris.
Rev Synth. 1997(4):457-93.
The French psychologist Alfred Binet is at the origin of the development of the mental test intended for diagnosing the intellectual level of children. Initially conceived as clinical tests their importation to the United States during the 1910's has considerably altered their use, significance and interpretation. Turned into political tools by eugenicists and hereditarists and used in large-scale selection operations, the tests have changed the psychologists' conception of intelligence: initially conceived as multifacted and qualitative, intelligence had become a single quantifiable entity. Within this context, the American psychologist Louis Leon Thurstone criticized the lack of exactness of the statistical tools used in the intelligence scale. Once objectivized, his method became a general law intended to account for all mental processes.
法国心理学家阿尔弗雷德·比奈是旨在诊断儿童智力水平的心理测试发展的源头。这些测试最初被构想为临床测试，在20世纪10年代传入美国后，其用途、意义和解释都发生了很大变化。这些测试被优生学家和遗传学家变成了政治工具，并用于大规模的选拔操作，改变了心理学家对智力的概念：智力最初被构想为多因素的和定性的，现在却变成了一个单一的可量化实体。在这种背景下，美国心理学家路易斯·利昂·瑟斯顿批评了智力量表中使用的统计工具缺乏精确性。一旦被客观化，他的方法就成了一条旨在解释所有心理过程的普遍法则。
