ABSTRACT
The historical importance of tests in the American psychology of infant intelligence has been highlighted in an excellent way in a volume edited by Michael Lewis (1976/1983). Early American infant psychology was marked by the influence of Arnold Gesell, who, 20 years after Alfred Binet, was the first to produce an adaptation of Binet-type tests to the very special case of infants. In French-language psychology, during this same period, the Swiss Jean Piaget was becoming the most influent psychologist and the main reference for the description of the first steps of human intelligence. Piaget worked in Binet’s laboratory, but, in the American empiricist tradition, Gesell was much more the true heir of Binet than the rationalist Piaget.
