What watching others watching can tell us: using video vignettes alongside narrative interviews to access multiple positions and embodied information in cross-cultural mother-infant research

Abstract

ABSTRACT Culturally-embedded and embodied understandings of interaction, transmitted intergenerationally, and often non-consciously through sensory and affective memory, are notoriously difficult to access. Such information is often contained in implicit memory and is not readily available for narrative explanation. Alternative methodologies that can access these models of meaning are required. While videos of mother-infant interaction have long been used for both assessment and clinical intervention, in this paper, the use of participant commentary during observation of interactional videos as a qualitative research method, alongside narrative interviews, is proposed. The utility of this dual method is demonstrated through its use in a study aimed at understanding local understandings of maternal sensitive responsiveness in a South African township setting. By analysing participant responses to video material alongside their answers to interview questions, this paper suggests that participant reflection on video material utilised alongside narrative interviewing allows for analysis and interpretation of shifting participant identifications and positions, capturing greater complexity in understandings of culturally-embedded parent-infant interaction.