This study explores whether a temporal or a general processing capacity deficit disrupts the real-time lexical processing of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Results of a sentence processing and an identification (ID) speech perception task, performed by a group of SLI children, a group of age-matched children and a group of receptive syntax-matched children, suggest that a limitation in general processing capacity is responsible for SLI children's poor performance of ID tasks and their slower lexical processing.