Yoga for Speech-Language Development

26 Yoga for Speech-Language Development

components of the Intentionality Model and the interactions

among them.

EFFORT

Cognitive
development

ENGAGEMENT

Social and

emotional

development

FORM USE

CONTENT

LANGUAGE

Figure 2.1 The Intentionality Model

From “The intentionality model and language acquisition” by Bloom, L. and

Tinker, E. (2001) Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

66 , 4, Serial No. 267, p.14. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishers, a

division of John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

The Intentionality Model contains two components, engagement

and effort. Engagement refers to the affective, social-connectedness

that infants experience in mutual, reciprocal interactions with

others. Infant behaviors such as eye gaze, joint attention, and

turn-taking are indications of their engagement with others

and provide the foundation of future communicative interactions.

Infant-toddler yoga classes offer many opportunities to foster

adult-child engagement, which will be discussed in Chapter 4.

The second component of the model, effort, refers to the work

it takes to learn language. This includes the infants’ cognitive

resources such as memory as well as the processes of attention,

perception, association, and integration. Infant-toddler yoga

classes provide many opportunities for the young child to use his

cognitive resources and processes as he attends to his caretaker,