Six communicative behaviors were examined retrospectively in home videotapes of children with confirmed autism (8 children with regressive autism, RA, and 2 with early onset autism, EOA) and typically developing (TD) peers (n = 8) at ages 8–13 months and 19–24 months. Response to name, complex babbling, productive vocabulary, looking at/tracking objects, response to speaker, and declarative pointing were scored for each video. The frequency of occurrence for 5 of 6 behaviors was computed by dividing the total by the number of footage minutes. One behavior, response to name, was scored for instances per opportunities. Taped segments were randomly presented for scoring to trained raters, who were blind to group membership. Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability for re-scoring 25% of the data was 92% and 95%, respectively. Productive vocabulary and response to speaker showed significant changes across time (p = .03; p = .009), but differences between TD and RA groups were nonsignificant. EOA children performed more poorly overall. Autism subtypes may affect early identification and communication development and should be considered in future studies of speech-language skills in children with autism.