ABSTRACT
The emergence and rising significance of qualitative methods in psychology are coterminous with the introduction and advancement of recording technologies (both audio and visual, and analogue and digital). This chapter focuses on understanding something of how participants orient towards, accommodate or otherwise respond to the video-camera as a cultural object, particularly when it is used regularly in an everyday context (family mealtime recordings). It employs an extract of a single-case longitudinal design, so as to examine the developing conversational skills of one child during an important period of language development during pre-school years, from 12 to 41 months. The extract provides some indications of the complex role of the camera, or rather, the recording of natural behaviour for academic/research purposes, particularly where the researcher is also a participant in the interaction. It also highlights certain hitherto unrecognised issues regarding the participant’s own recognition and orientation to the video-camera in situ.
