Abstract

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is characterized by selective delays in numerous aspects of language and communication development. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability to evaluate the conversational violations, a core aspect of pragmatic competence, in preschoolers with SLI. To assess this skill, the Conversational Violation Test (CVT; Surian, Baron-Cohen and van der Lely, 1996) was used. Participants were 12 children with SLI and 16 typically developing children, all participants were monolingual Italian speakers attending a kindergarten at the time of the research. The results show that preschoolers with SLI have significantly lower performance than IQ matched TD controls in recognizing different types of pragmatic violations occurring in very simple conversations.