Otitis media, language development, and parental verbal stimulation

Examined the impact of recurrent otitis media in the first 3 years of life on verbal abilities of 3- to 4-year-old children and the potential for parental verbal stimulation to buffer the negative effects of intermittent hearing loss. Fathers and mothers of 56 children with variable histories of otitis media participated in videotaped parent-child interactions that were used to code level of parental verbal stimulation. Measures of the children's verbal abilities were the McCarthy Verbal Scale Index and a score for the child's verbalizations with each parent. Active and engaging parental verbalizations appeared to buffer the child's developing verbal abilities from the deleterious effects of recurrent otitis. Post hoc analyses examined the implications of task structure and parent sex on parent verbal stimulation. Discussion addresses the importance of paternal involvement for the home language environment and implications for intervention.