Pseudoword/sign repetition performance across bimodal bilinguals from the US and Brazil: a comparative analysis Presented in ASL; English This study involves a cross‐linguistic analysis of phonological repetition in signed and spoken language by hearing bimodal bilingual children (kodas) and bimodal Deaf children with a cochlear implant (CIs). While previous studies have demonstrated mediocre performance on pseudoword repetition by implanted children (Dillon et al. 2004), these studies focused only on children from hearing non‐signing families, resulting in delays in their exposure to a first language. The participants in the current study are aged 4;0‐7;0 and are acquiring either American Sign Language (ASL) and English, or Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). All koda participants, plus the American CI participants, come from Deaf signing families and received full exposure to a sign language from birth. Our comparison of bimodal bilingual Deaf children with CIs to their koda counterparts is quite novel; previous studies traditionally only compare monolingual speech‐only CI children to their monolingual peers. Participants performed pseudoword and pseudosign repetition tasks testing their phonological memory, calling for reproduction of novel sound or sign sequences that display typical phonological parameters of the children’s target languages. The BP pseudoword test consisted of stimuli from the Teste de Pseudopalavras (Santos & Bueno, 2003) and the English stimuli came from Carter, Dillon & Pisoni (2002). The pseudosign stimuli were loosely designed after Mann et al. (2010), consistent with phonotactic constraints (involving handshape, location, orientation and movement) for each of the target sign languages, but varying in number of hands, number of handshapes, symmetry, and movement type. Children’s pseudoword production was scored in a binary fashion for overall accuracy, with additional qualitative analyses of syllable structure, correct primary stress and phoneme choice. Pseudosigns were similarly scored for overall accuracy, as well as for accuracy of the individual phonological parameters. Across the two language pairs, koda children had overall high accuracy on both the pseudoword and pseudosign tasks, reproducing target stimuli with roughly seventy‐five percent accuracy. The CIs from signing Deaf families performed largely on par with age‐matched koda children on both spoken and signed tasks. However, Brazilian CIs from hearing non‐signing families, who had relatively late age of implantation (2‐3 years of age) and limited access to sign language, performed much worse on both the spoken and signed tests, as can be seen in examples (3) and (4). Notably, these children’s pseudosign scores were still higher than their pseudoword scores, despite their limited exposure to sign. As can be seen in example (3), on the BP pseudoword test, CI child number five, who has Deaf, signing parents, performed much higher than his peers from hearing, non‐signing families. The striking performance gap between our native signing participants and their late‐signing counterparts (as well as the non‐signing Dillon et al. study) points to important advantages of early and unrestricted sign language exposure for phonological memory. Contrary to claims of signing as a hindrance to speech development (e.g. Svirsky et al. 2000), our data suggest that early bilingualism in spoken and sign language is a potential key to successful speech development for children with CIs. Word Count: 500 Example (1): Target ASL pseudosign Example (2): koda (left) and CI (right) reproduction of pseudosign Example (3): Repetition of BP pseudowords with medial similarity to actual spoken BP words Example (4): BP pseudoword reproduction by koda and CI References Carter, A.K., Killon, C.M. & Pisoni, D.B. (2002). Imitation of nonwords by hearing impaired children with cochlear implants: Suprasegmental analyses. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 16(8), 619‐638. Dillon, C.M., Cleary, M., Pisoni, D.P. & Carter, A.K. (2004). Imitation of nonwords by hearing‐
impaired children with cochlear implants: Segmental Analyses. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 18(1), 39‐55. Mann, W., Marshall, C., Mason, K. & Morgan, G. (2010). The acquisition of sign language: The impact of phonetic complexity on phonology. Language Learning and Development, 6, 1‐
27. Santos, F. H. & Bueno. O. F. A. (2003). Validation of the Brazilian Children’s Test of Pseudoword Repetition in Portuguese speakers aged 4 to 10 years. Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, 36, 1533‐1547. Svirsky, M. A., Robbins, A. M., Kirk, K. I., Pisoni, D. B., & Miyamoto, R. T. (2000). Language development in profoundly deaf children with cochlear implants. Psychological Science, 11, 153‐158.