“…Previous studies suggest that imitation abilities are negatively affected in infants with HI (Chin, Bergeson, & Phan, 2012;Dillon, Cleary, Pisoni, & Carter, 2004;Ertmer & Goffman, 2011;Ertmer, Kirk, Sehgal, Riley, & Osberger, 1997;Nakata, Trehub, & Kanda, 2012;Peng, Tomblin, & Turner, 2008;Sehgal, Kirk, Svirsky, Ertmer, & Osberger, 1998). While there is very little past research that investigates naturalistic vocal imitation in hearing impaired infants, there are several studies that looked at imitative abilities of older children with cochlear implants (CIs) by using both non-word and whole word repetition tasks in laboratory settings.…”