Relationships between infant visual skills and the development of object permanence and expressive language skills were examined with 31 infants in three groups: visually typical, visually atypical, and Down Syndrome. Measures used to evaluate visual status were: forced preferential looking, optokinetic nystagmus, and behavioral. Object permanence scores were obtained from the Uzgiris-Hunt Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development and expressive language scores from the Bzoch-League Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Scale. A relationship between intactness of binocular vision and performance on tasks measuring concepts of object permanence emerged for the visually typical and visually atypical infants. No support for a relationship between intactness of binocular vision and performance on tasks measuring expressive language skills was found for any of the groups. Down Syndrome infants demonstrated a typical, although delayed, developmental sequence for object permanence and expressive language skills and a low incidence of visual deficits. The observed cross-validation of information obtained on visual status and level of object permanence skills confirmed the value of collaborations between vision science and education. (Author/CL)