Parent-reported language and communication skills at one and two years of age in relation to otitis media in the first two years of life

Objective. As part of a study of possible effects of early life otitis medi a on children's development, we attempted to determine whether levels of la nguage and communication skills at 1 and 2 years of age are associated with the cumulative duration of middle ear effusion (MEE) in the first 2 years of life. Methods. Subjects (N = 2156) were followed at one of eight study sites in t he Pittsburgh area. Middle ear status was monitored closely throughout the first 2 years of life. For each child, the cumulative percentage of days wi th MEE was estimated based on diagnoses at visits and interpolations for in tervals between visits. For each child also, 1 or both parents completed th e MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory-Words and Gestures (CDI-WG) when the child was 1 year of age and the MacArthur Communicative Developme nt Inventory-Words and Sentences (CDI-WS) when the child was 2 years of age . Results. Unadjusted correlations between scores on the CDI-WG and percentag e of days with MEE in the first year of life were close to zero, and there were no statistically significant negative correlations. Unadjusted correla tions between scores on the CDI-WS and the cumulative percentage of days wi th MEE in year 2 and in years 1 and 2 combined were generally negative and statistically significant, but the magnitudes of those correlations were no higher than 0.09. After adjustment for sociodemographic variables, only th e Vocabulary Production Scale of the CDI-WS remained correlated significant ly with the percentage of days with MEE, and the percentage of days with ME E accounted for only a negligible percentage of the variance in scores on t his scale. Conclusions. In this diverse sample of children, parent-reported levels of language skills at 1 and 2 years of age were correlated negligibly with the cumulative percentage of days with MEE in the children's first and second years of life.