The current study compares the early communication of 12- month-old children with and without chronic otitis media during interactions with their parents. Results indicated that children with chronic otitis media used significantly fewer nonverbal strategies to help parents interpret their otherwise unintelligible vocaliz ations than their healthy peers did. The two groups were similar in early lexical development and some aspects of pragmatic development; however, there was much individual variation within groups in frequency and diversity of communicative intents. These findings suggest that children with chronic otitis media may be at risk for subsequent language problems, and that low frequency of nonverbal gestures may serve as an early marker of later language difficulties within this population. In addition to providing information about the earliest stages of communicative development in this group of children at mild to moderate risk of language problems, this finding confirms the results of other studies suggesting that nonverbal and verbal communicative attempts form a single system in the young child.
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