Introduction: the perception of verticality contributes to human balance and is essential for the development of language. Children with oral language changes and/or writing may have vestibular disorders leading to changes in the perception of verticality. The bucket test evaluates the perception of verticality by Subjective Visual Vertical, a measurement of the angular deviation from a central point that has been used to diagnose vestibular disorders.

Objective: to correlate the Subjective Visual Vertical (VVS) in children with and without oral and/or written language.

Methods: quantitative study conducted in a private school and a clinic-school in São Paulo with 30 children, with age ranging from 07 to 11 years, which were divided into a control group and experimental group. The experimental group was composed of children with oral language change and/or writing and the control group for children with no history or complaints about language changes.

Results: the mean deviations of the VVS for the experimental group was 2.8 and for the control group was 2.1%. Statistically significant difference was observed between the values of the angular deviation in the experimental and control groups (p = 0.01867).

Conclusion: Children with and without oral and/or written language differ in assessing the subjective visual vertical.