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The CDaCI project is a six-center, prospective study of cochlear implantation of US children under the age of 5 years. The study probes child, family, school and peer factors that influence children’s progress in developing spoken language after cochlear implantation. We are interested in the effects of early-established trajectories in oral language on participants’ psychological, social and scholastic adjustment. Because the emergence of spoken language is likely based in success across developmental domains, the CDaCI attempts to relate variability in linguistic outcomes to environmental, social, interventional, and biological influences. The reliable elicitation of communication and linguistic data poses a challenge in early childhood research. We address this challenge with prospective, hierarchical measures of speech recognition and language, video-analytic techniques that track communication skills, and parental surveys of quality of life. CDaCI participants are (CI) children implanted prior to the age of 5y (n=188; mean age = 2.2 + 1.2y) and normal hearing (NH) age-mates serving as controls (n=97; mean age = 2.3 + 1.1y). Here we report baseline and preliminary observations through year 2 of evaluative follow-up.Despite wide recognition of the benefits of early cochlear implantation, there remains uncertainty with respect to approaches that enable children to use cochlear implants to their fullest potential. Early CDaCI results suggest that linguistic outcomes are modeled by a model of variables that are highly interactive, and in some cases confounded. Emergent capabilities in verbal language aremodified not only by variables related to timing of provision of the  implant, but also by environmental and surgical factors, and the quality of caregiver-child interactions.