5541V - Comprehension of Brazilian Portuguese Clitic Pronouns by Children With Cochlear Implants and Normal Hearing Peers

Children with cochlear implants (CIs) produce less clitic pronouns and make more morphosyntactic errors when producing clitics than children with normal hearing (NH). Additionally, children with CIs face challenges processing prosodic information in sentences. Here we investigate the role of sentence stress on clitic processing in children with CIs. Thirteen children with CIs and 15 NH peers (8-12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated on a computerized sentence comprehension task that involved manipulation of stress placement of possible antecedents to clitic pronouns. Results indicate that comprehension of sentences with clitic pronouns is challenging for children with CIs. Additionally, children with CIs do not use prosodic information to support comprehension of sentences with clitics similarly to NH peers.