The Rutgers Health Institute for the Study of Child Development includes psychologists, educators, and other professionals who focus on understanding and facilitating the development of healthy children and their families.

The institute seeks to understand children through studying normal and atypical developmental patterns. As children mature from infancy into childhood and adolescence, identifying possible paths of growth and factors of influence can help physicians, educators, and parents understand and best serve them.

A complete understanding of good health involves identifying emotional, social, and psychological functioning, as well as physical well-being. Our goal is to gather this research for use in interventions that can benefit children every day.

To accomplish the goals of the institute, we incorporate several tests and diagnostic tools into our analysis. These include:

• Behavioral teratology (abnormalities of physiological development) through studies of the long-term effects of prenatal drug and other toxic exposures and conditions
• Characterizing a child's physical and social environments
• Identifying factors that affect behavioral and physiological reactions to stress, and the capacity to cope with stress
• The impact of deviant caregiving and traumatic events in a child's life on the development of self-worth and self-evaluative emotions
• The study of cognitive, social, and emotional development in typically developing children as well as children with autism spectrum disorder
• Using brain-imaging technology to study relationships between brain and behavior

Physicians with the institute are faculty members of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Both are part of Rutgers University, one of the top research institutions in America. Our doctors are active in research and in teaching about all aspects of child development, and each brings leading-edge knowledge from the classroom to the exam room.

If your child’s physician recommends that your child may benefit from child behavioral interactions and studies, please contact the Rutgers Health Institute for the Study of Child Development.