Interacting with others is both the purpose and the means for the development of language and cognition. Hearing is crucial for oral language development. Experimental studies of children with hearing impairment (HI) often show that they have problems in language development. However, we know little about their language use in everyday conversations. The purpose of the project is to investigate how children with different degrees of HI participate in conversation with peers with normal hearing (NH) and how factors like speech recognition and working memory influence. The data will consist of dialogues where one participant is a child with HI, conventionally aided or with a cochlear implant (CI), aged 5-8 and of dialogues between two NH children. The analysis will focus on language use (lexical and grammatical constructions used, evidence of formulation problems) as well as on patterns in the interaction. The results will be related to results from assessments of speech recognition, speech intelligibility, working memory. Existing data from adolescents with HI and CI will be included. The project will contribute to the development of theoretically based methods for assessment and intervention for children with HI. By identifying well-functioning strategies in the conversations, we can help the participants with HI to be more successful in communication with others, thereby precluding problems with social relations and with participation in society.