[Pragmatic abilities in the discourse of children with and without specific language impairment].

Background: to investigate the pragmatic difficulties presented by children with specific language impairment and to verify how these deficits influence their discourse performance.
Aim: to analyze the request-response sequences in the discourse of normal and Specific Language Impairment Children (SLI) during a 20-minute free-play situation with an adult.
Method: subjects of this study were 29 children, male and female, with ages ranging from 2:0 to 4:11 years. Data was collected during a free-play situation with an adult.
Results: SLI children frequently ignored the questions made by the adult and responded innappropriately more often.
Conclusion: qualitative and quantitative differences in the pattern of responses and in the use of pragmatic abilities were found for the SLI children.