discussion and respond

Discussions are fundamental to shared learning, so please be sure to participate early and often! Studying psychological theory from a historical perspective is a very important part of your educational and career path.

As you move through each unit in this course, you will be reading about different theories and who developed them. Each week, you will be asked to apply one of the major theories to a case example which you will create.

The application of the theory to the case will highlight how a theory that may have been developed over a century ago ties to real life examples in the field of psychology today. As you move further into your career, you will often see these ties in your daily work. The Discussion topics are an excellent preparation for your learning to take theory and put it into practice.

After you have completed the Reading, and without reviewing your classmates’ responses, post your initial response to the following Discussion. Your post should be at least 150 words in length and should extend the discussion of the group supported by your course materials and/or other appropriate resources.

After you have submitted your initial post, take time to review your classmates’ responses and to respond specifically and substantially to at least two of them.

Discussion Topic

Explain Binet’s view through a case example you create. Include age, sex, and three symptoms for your case. Explain how that case would be viewed though Binet’s lens.

Discussion for respond 1

Hello everyone,

Case Study: Cassandra is an 8-year-old female, Cassandra has been falling short in-class assignments, refuses to participate in class, and often disrupts class and is referred to as a "class clown" by her other classmates. Cassandra's parents are concerned about her childish behavior and feel although she is not paying attention and will not pass the class and might end up getting held back if she doesn't start participating and paying attention in school. 

If Binet were to look at this situation he would want to look and figure out in what area is Cassandra lacking to cause her to have these issues in school? Binet believed that assessing cognitive functions such as memory, attention, imagination, and comprehension would provide a more appropriate measure of intelligence (Schultz, 2016). Therefore Binet would want to give Cassandra an I.Q test to measure you intelligence level and doing this you can see their mental age and if Cassandra were to take an I.Q test and have the mental age of 6 it would make sense why she can't focus and understand at the level she is at even though she is at an older age biologically. Mental age is the age at which children of average ability can perform certain tasks (Schultz, 2016). Binet would look into mental age during the results of the I.Q test, but benefits that Binet beviled came with the I.Q test is to find and measure exactly what areas you might be lacking or measure something you are very intelligent in, this will help Binet to try and help Cassandra get in her own level of learning and hopefully stop the acting out. 

References-

Discussion respond 2

Good morning everyone!

     Even though he learned quite a lot from the likes of Galton and Cattell, Alfred Binet discarded the idea that sensorimotor testing could be used as an accurate way to test intelligence. Instead, he opted to create a battery of tests that measured things that, up until that point, would've been considered slightly unorthodox - things like imagination, attention, and memory (Schultz, 2015). Binet helped to pioneer what would later be known as the "stanford-binet" test, versions of which are still used in America today. Tests like this might help people like....

Paxton. Paxton is an 8 year old male from the bustling city of New York. He thoroughly enjoys the guitar, but he has an severe amount of difficulty reading and writing. This causes him a great deal of anxiety, which has led to disengage from academic studies altogether. All he wants to do is play music and video games and he becomes greatly agitated with anyone that tries to alter his behavior.

     Binet is appropriately famous for his work on the measurement of intelligence but he is also on record with quite a few cautionary tales about the subject. Paxton would be an ideal candidate for one of the tests that Binet helped to create. By administering the test, which consists of around 30 questions of increasing difficulty, Binet could determine Paxton's "Mental age" as opposed to his actual age. From that point, appropriate measures could be taken to place Paxton in an environment that he could succeed in. For instance, if Paxton's mental age is somewhere closer to 5 or 6, then he could be placed in a lower academic grade that could benefit him in the long run.

     On to the disclaimers... Binet was VERY adamant that his test was not the final word on intelligence. He believed that there were a myriad of things that affected intelligence that simply can not be measured on a test - things like motivation and cultural influence (Schultz, 2015). Though Binet's test has been widely adopted in America, he was always under the impression that the measurement of intelligence should be qualitative and not quantitative. This is open to interpretation, but to me it says that while we can measure a certain degree of intelligence (enough to help and have a positive effect on those who need it), we will never truly be able to take ALL factors into consideration, and therefore, we will never truly be able to "measure" intelligence".