Steven Holochwost

Dr. Steven Holochwost is a developmental psychologist who works with programs designed to improve the lives of vulnerable children and youth. His research in child development examines the effects of environment, and particularly poverty and parenting, on voluntary forms of self-regulation (e.g., executive functions) and the involuntary activity of neurophysiological systems that support self-regulatory abilities. This research is directly relevant to his applied work, which examines the efficacy of educational interventions for children in poverty. The common thread running through both these lines of work is the need to understand how poverty impacts child development, and how programs that expand educational opportunities for children can mitigate those effects.

Dr. Holochwost earned his Ph.D. in developmental psychology (with a minor in neurobiology) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining CUNY, Dr. Holochwost was Director of Research for Youth & Families at WolfBrown (a research and evaluation firm), and prior to that, Associate Director of Research at the University of Delaware’s Early Learning Center and a Senior Assistant Child Advocate at the Office of the Child Advocate for the State of New Jersey.

Awards and Grants

• Making Space in Science Instruction: Developing the SPACE-IT Program to Foster Students’ Spatial Thinking Skills and Science Achievement (2021 – 2025), Institute of Educational Sciences (co-PI).
• Research on Equity via the Arts in Childhood (REACH) Lab (2021 – 2023), National Endowment for the Arts Research Labs Grant (co-PI).
• Tuning the Heartstrings: Music Education, Persistence, and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (2020-2023), National Endowment for the Arts (PI). 

Courses Taught

• Psychology 217 – Child Psychology

Publications

• Holochwost, S. J., Gomes, L. A., Propper, C. B., Brown, E. D., & Iruka, I. U. (In press). Child care policy as an anti-poverty strategy: The need to address neurophysiological self-regulation. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
• Holochwost, S. J., Kolacz, J., & Mills-Koonce, W. R. (In press). Towards an understanding of neurophysiological self-regulation in early childhood: The need for a new approach. Developmental Psychobiology.
• Propper, C. B., Gustafsson, H. C., Holochwost, S. J., & Coffman, J. (In press). Parasympathetic response to challenge in infancy moderates the effects of sociodemographic risk on academic achievement at school entry. Developmental Psychobiology. 
• Holochwost, S. J., Goldstein, T. R., & Wolf, D. P. (2021). Delineating the benefits of arts education for children’s socioemotional development. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
• Holochwost, S. J., Robb, S. L., Henley, A. K., Stegenga, K., Perkins, S. M., Russ, K. A., Seethal, J. A., Delgado, D., Haase, J. E., & Krater, C. M. (2020). Active music engagement and cortisol as an acute stress biomarker in young hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients and caregivers: Results of a single case design pilot study. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, e2865.