30 Yoga for Speech-Language Development
indeed have a feeling of contentedness, but does not intend to
express this feeling to the adult for the purpose of communication.
In the next stage of language development, the Prelinguistic
Intentional stage, which lasts from about 8 to 12 months, infants
acquire the ability to engage in purposeful intentional two-
way communication through a variety of nonlinguistic means
including gestures, gaze, and vocalizations. For example, the infant
might reach or point to a desired object such as a toy on a shelf
to request that an adult obtain it. Similarly, a child at this stage
could point to a pet dog in order to show it to an adult, a form
of early communication called “joint attention.” Joint attention is
the simultaneous engagement of two (or more) individuals on a
single, shared object of focus (Pence Turnbull and Justice 2017).
The emergence of joint attention in infants is a hallmark of their
development of intentionality. During this first year, infants and
their caregivers engage in many everyday routine activities such
as mealtime and getting dressed. These everyday routines, called
“formats” (Bruner 1983), allow babies to interact with adults
in predictable ways. During routines, which are often playful
and game-like, infants hear many linguistic form/content/use
interactions, which provide opportunities for babies to exercise
their receptive language skills.
During this period infants begin to understand words for
objects and actions, but only in context. In fact, babies may give
the appearance of understanding more than they actually do
because of their reliance on comprehension strategies (Weiss
2014) such as looking at the object the adult looks at (Miller and
Paul 1995). Young children learn to comprehend language in
context, relying on the gestures, objects, and people present. They
also rely on what is said in these situations. Consequently, parents
and speech-language pathologists often disagree about young
children’s comprehension (Weiss 2014). Infant-toddler yoga
classes have repetitive, routinized scripts and activities that could