Child Study Center

The Child Study Center was established in 1967, as a result of a study begun ten years earlier, when Brown participated in the National Collaborative Project, which until 1974 collected information on 50,000 children from birth to the age of eight. Lewis Lipsitt came to Brown to work on Brown’s part of the project, which involved the setting up of a Child Development Study to keep track of 4,000 children from birth at Providence Lying-in Hospital and then at the Follow-Up Unit at the Hunter Laboratory, directed by Professor Anthony Davids ’49. The Follow-Up Unit was later located in a carriage house on Waterman Street and then moved to Butler Hospital. As director of the Center, Lipsitt started a program on infant behavior and development, and a graduate training program in experimental child psychology. He also edits The Brown University Child Behavior and Development Letter, which provides “Monthly reports on the problems of children and adolescents growing up.”