Alliteration and rhyme skills in children with specific language impairment.

Purpose: this study investigated and compared the performance of school-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their peers typically developing language in alliteration and rhyme tests. The study also aimed to evaluate the influence of semantic and phonological distractors on both tests.

Methods: twelve school-aged children with SLI (study group - SG) and 48 peers typically developing language (control group - CG) aged 7 to 9 years.

Story's complexity and silent pauses in children with and without specific language impairment.

Purpose: To verify the average time of silent pauses in narratives and the influence of story's complexity in the occurrence of these pauses in narratives of children with typical language development and children with specific language impairment (SLI), and further to compare these aspects between groups.

Methods: Sixty children aged between seven to ten years took part in this research, being 40 typical language developing children and 20 with SLI. To collect data, each child produced 15 narratives, each one based on a four-scene-sequence.

Word class and silent pauses in spoken narratives of children with specific language impairment.

Purpose: To determine whether word class has any influence on the mean duration of silent pauses in the spoken narratives of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and in those with typical language development (TLD).

Methods: The study sample consisted of 60 children in the age range from 7 to 10 years: 20 with SLI; and 40 with TLD. Each child produced 15 narratives, each based on a set of four pictures (scenes) and each set of pictures being more complex than the last.