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Purpose: This study sought to (a) characterize the demographic, audiological, and intervention variability in a population of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children receiving state services for hearing loss; (b) identify predictors of vocabulary delays; and (c) evaluate factors influencing the success and timing of early identification and intervention efforts at a state level. Method: One hundred DHH infants and toddlers (aged 4–36 months) enrolled in early intervention completed the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories, and detailed information about their audiological and clinical history was collected. We examined the influence of demographic, clinical, and audiological factors on vocabulary outcomes and early intervention efforts. Results: We found that this sample showed spoken language vocabulary delays (production) relative to hearing peers and showed room for improvement in rates of early diagnosis and intervention. These delays in vocabulary and early support services were predicted by an overlapping subset of hearing-, health-, and home-related variables. Conclusions: In a diverse sample of DHH children receiving early intervention, we identify variables that predict delays in vocabulary and early support services, which reflected both dimensions that are immutable, and those that clinicians and caretakers can potentially alter. We provide a discussion on the implications for clinical practice. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19449839 

ABSTRACT—Recent research has revealed that infants begin understanding words at around 6 months. After that, infants’ comprehension vocabulary increases grad- ually in a linear way over 8–18 months, according to data from parental checklists. In contrast, infants’ word comprehension improves robustly, qualitatively, and in a nonlinear way just after their first birthday, according to data from studies on spoken word comprehension. In this review, I integrate observational and experimental data to explain these divergent results. I argue that infants’ comprehension boost is not well-explained by changes in their language input for common words, but rather by proposing that they learn to take better advantage of rel- atively stable input data. Next, I propose potentially complementary theoretical accounts of what makes older infants better learners. Finally, I suggest how the research community can expand our empirical base in this understudied area, and why doing so will inform our knowledge about child development.