Tina Grieco-Calub, PhD

Biography

Tina Grieco-Calub, PhD is a certified audiologist who spent her early career providing clinical services to patients across the lifespan who are deaf or hard of hearing. She has integrated her clinical experience with her diverse research training in neuroscience, auditory development, and language acquisition to develop her current research program, which explores the relations among individuals’ ability to hear and perceive speech, ability to process and learn from spoken language in real time, and their cognitive abilities. Her current research projects aim to identify the factors that place children at risk for delays in spoken language, communication, and cognitive development when their hearing experience and/or access to speech is altered.

We rely on our ability to hear speech in order to develop our native spoken language, to learn verbal content, and to sustain communication during social interactions. Hearing, however, is more than the passive encoding of speech by the auditory system in these moments. Rather, hearing involves the processing of speech input rapidly, in real time, so that the speech content can be used in a meaningful way. Thus, reduced audibility of speech, either in the moment (e.g., listening to teacher in a noisy classroom) or chronically (e.g., due to hearing loss), has the potential to disrupt speech processing and downstream language and cognitive functions. Grieco-Calub’s NIH-funded research projects test these relations directly. Using behavioral techniques, the projects test the extent to which real-time language processing, language comprehension, word learning, and literacy skills are influenced by reduced audibility of speech either from childhood hearing loss or background noise.

Publications

For an updated list of publications, please see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/tina%20m..grieco-calub.1/bibliography/public/

Selected publications:

Simeon, K.M. & Grieco-Calub, T.M. (in press). The impact of hearing experience on children’s use of phonological and semantic information during lexical access. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research

Ingvalson, E., Grieco-Calub, T.M., Perry, L., & Vandam, M. (2020). Rethinking emergent literacy in children with hearing loss. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00039

Avivi-Reich, M., Roberts, M.Y., & Grieco-Calub, T.M. (2020). Quantifying the effects of background speech babble on preschool children’s novel word learning in a multi-session paradigm: a preliminary study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(1), 345-356. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-H-19-0083

Grieco-Calub, T.M., Collins, M.-S., Snyder, H.E., & Ward, K.M. (2019). Background speech disrupts working memory span in 5-year-old children. Ear and Hearing 40(3):437-446. https://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.0000000000000636

Simeon, K.S., Bicknell, K., & Grieco-Calub, T.M. (2018). Belief shift or only facilitation: how semantic expectancy affects processing of speech degraded by background noise. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 116. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00116

Feng, G., Ingvalson, E.M., Grieco-Calub, T.M., Roberts, M.Y., Ryan., M.E., Birmingham, P., Burrowes, D., Young, N., & Wong, P.C.M. (2018). Neural preservation underlies speech improvement from auditory deprivation in young cochlear implant recipients. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(5), E1022-E1032, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717603115

Grieco-Calub, T.M., Simeon, K.M., Snyder, H.E., Lew-Williams, C. (2017b). Word segmentation from noise-band vocoded speech. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 32(10), 1344-1356. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2017.1354129

Grieco-Calub, T.M., Ward, K.M., & Brehm, L. (2017a). Multitasking During Degraded Speech Recognition in School-Age Children. Trends in Hearing, 21, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/2331216516686786

Ward, K.M., Shen, J., Souza, P.E., & Grieco-Calub, T.M. (2017). Age-related differences in listening effort during degraded speech recognition. Ear and Hearing, 38(1), 74-84. https://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.0000000000000355

Grieco-Calub, T.M. and Litovsky, R.Y. (2012). Spatial acuity in two-to-three-year-old children with normal acoustic hearing, unilateral cochlear implants and bilateral cochlear implant. Ear and Hearing, 33(5), 561-72. https://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.0b013e31824c7801

Grieco-Calub, T.M. and Litovsky, R.Y. (2010). Sound localization skills in children who use bilateral cochlear implants and in children with normal acoustic hearing. Ear and Hearing, 31(5), 645-656. https://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.0b013e3181e50a1d

Grieco-Calub, T.M., Saffran, J.R. and Litovsky, R.Y. (2009). Spoken word recognition abilities in toddlers who use cochlear implants. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52(6), 1390-400. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2009/08-0154)

Grants

2020-2025

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, R01DC018596

The influence of visual speech on lexical access in children

The project aims to test the extent to which visual speech affects lexical processing and speech comprehension in school-age children with cochlear implants.

PI: Tina Grieco-Calub

Collaborators: Christina Runge, Medical College of Wisconsin; Nancy Young, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago

2020-2025

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, R01HD100439

Effects of background noise on word learning in preschool-age children

The project aims to quantify the effects of background noise on the timecourse of children’s acquisition of novel words.

PI: Tina Grieco-Calub

Collaborators: Katherine Gordon, Boys Town National Research Hospital

2020-2025

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), R01DC017984

Literacy Development for Preschoolers with Hearing Loss

This longitudinal project aims to measure literacy development in preschool-age children who are deaf or hard of hearing and their peers who have normal hearing.

Multi-PI: Erin Ingvalson, Tina Grieco-Calub, Lynn Perry, Mark VanDam

2017-2019 (no cost extension)

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), R56DC015492

Effects of Hearing Experience on Audiovisual Speech Perception in Children

The project aimed to evaluate differences in visual attention and audiovisual speech perception in children with hearing loss and their peers with normal hearing.

PI: Tina Grieco-Calub

8/2011-7/2015 (no cost extension)

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), R15DC011605PI

Processing of spoken language in young children who use cochlear implants

The goal of the project was to determine the individual factors that influence speed and accuracy of spoken language processing in children who use cochlear implants.

PI: (Year 1): Tina Grieco-Calub; (Years 2-4): Janet Olson, Northern Illinois University

1/2014-12/2015 (no cost extension)

American Hearing Research Foundation

Statistical Learning from Acoustic Simulations of Cochlear Implants

The goal of the project was to identify whether spectral degradation interferes with auditory statistical learning in adults and children.

PI: Tina Grieco-Calub & Casey Lew-Williams

Invited Presentations

“Children flexibly use visual speech cues in the presence of degraded auditory speech.” Oral presentation at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL, November 22, 2019.

“Beyond Word Recognition Accuracy: Using Real-time Measures of Language Processing”. Co-presented oral presentation with Dr. Kristi Hendrickson (U. of Iowa) at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL, November 21, 2019.

“Cognitive costs of background noise on children’s language processing” Knowles Hearing Center Symposium 2019, Evanston, IL, October 11, 2019.

“Children’s real-time spoken language processing in the presence of background speech.” 176th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Victoria, BC, November 8, 2018.

“Auditory Development and Language Processing in Young Children with Cochlear Implants.” University of Chicago Medicine Audiology Symposium: Applied Practices in Pediatric Audiology, Chicago, IL, November 2, 2018.

“The cognitive costs of degraded hearing in children.” Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, November 17, 2017

“Degraded auditory input in childhood: influence on language and cognitive processing.” The Language Acquisition and Visual Attention Lab, Boston University, October 17, 2017

“The cognitive costs of degraded hearing.” Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, November 11, 2016.

“The Impact of Hearing Loss on Childhood Development.” Hear, Now & Forever Conference, Luzerne County Intermediate Unit, Wilkes-Barre, PA, October 18, 2016.

“Limitations of today’s hearing technology: do hearing devices really restore hearing?” Knowles Hearing Center Symposium 2016, Evanston, IL, October 7, 2016.

“The impact of degraded speech input on development: beyond speech perception.” Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, February 16, 2016.

Education

Research Areas