Thirty hearing‐impaired children were given two tests of intonation contour perception. The first involved a receptive task in which subjects had to identify the “odd man out” in three stimuli. The second involved an imitative task in which subjects had to imitate an intonation contour. The imitations in the second task were tape recorded for subsequent rating by five trained listeners on a ten‐point scale. The same stimuli were used for both tests, these being computer‐generated synthetic vowels with rising, flat, and falling contours. Among the older subjects (=>5 years), all the severely deaf (3 frequency average loss90 dB HL) passed both the receptive and the imitative task. Among the younger children (<4 years), the proportions passing the imitative task were the same as in the older group. Only one severely deaf child, however, was able to pass the receptive task. The fact that the receptive task was too difficult for the younger age group was confirmed using normally heating children. (Both hearing and deaf children, however, were able to perform a visual‐spatial analog of the task.) The findings suggest that the evaluation of intonation perception in young hearing‐impaired children should be based on imitative tasks, rather than receptive tasks. They further indicate that all severely deaf, and approximately 50% of profoundly deaf children should have sufficient auditory capacity for the perception of intonation contours.