THE EFFECT OF OTITIS-MEDIA AND QUALITY OF DAY-CARE ON CHILDRENS LANGUAGE-DEVELOPMENT

The objective of this study was to understand whether experience with otitis media (OM) early in life affected hearing levels of children as well as whether it affected the language development of children at 2 4 months of age. This study followed 67 daycare-attending infants for several years, performing weekly ear examinations by a nurse and physi cian and regular hearing testing. The Sequenced inventory of Communica tion Development (SICD) was administered to all children at 24 months of age. Children were divided into chronic and non-chronic OM groups. In addition, half the children were in high quality daycare and half w ere in low quality daycare. Results suggested thai children in low qua lity daycare with chronic OM performed more poorly on the expressive p ortion of the SICD in comparison to non-chronic children in low qualit y care. There were no differences on SICD performance for the OM group s in high quality care. Children with chronic OM also showed a hearing loss during episodes of OM while children with non-chronic or infrequ ent episodes did not show a hearing loss even during bouts of OM. Find ings suggest that chronic OM may have adverse effects only when there is a hearing loss associated with OM and children are in a suboptimal environment, like low quality childcare.