The aim of the present study was to describe the similarities and differences found throughout lexical acquisition between normally developing children and children with developmental language disorder through an extensive literature review. The search was carried out in the databases SciELO, Lilacs, PubMed, Web of Science and Dedalus, and covered the last decades of studies in the area. The selected studies, of observational or experimental nature, showed great variability of findings related to vocabulary development, describing tendencies and variations, and also other abilities enrolled in the lexical acquisition process. Generally, the results suggest that the lexical difficulties that constitute one of the first alterations observed in children with developmental language disorder are justified by difficulties in abilities and/or characteristics influenced or directly related to mechanisms involved in information processing, which compromise the quality and the retrieval of phonological and semantic representations corresponding to a new lexical item. However, many studies suggest that ostensive situations and great contextual support emphasizing few novel words facilitate the lexical acquisition of children with developmental language disorder.
Child language; Language development; Language development disorders; Vocabulary; Review literature as topic