The Secret Life of Four-Year-Olds - Dr Paul Howard-Jones interview

29 January 2015

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You’re an educational neuroscientist. What does that mean?
Over the past ten years, education and neuroscience have been talking to each other, and there is now a field dedicated to that arena. What we do combines neuroscience, education and psychology. The theoretical concept of the mind is absolutely crucial in making links between the brain and what we do in the classroom. And because it involves children, it has a strong emphasis on development as well.

 

You took part in The Secret Life of Four Year Olds. Explain a bit about the programme, and what your role is.
It’s an observational documentary looking at ten four-year-olds as they meet in a nursery that’s rigged with cameras throughout. My role, together with Sam [Developmental Psychologist Dr Sam Wass] is to observe the children and to provide some scientific insight into the way they interact with each other and what is happening. I suppose, for me in particular, I’m interested in learning, so I was fascinated to see how the children were learning as a result of their experiences, and the changes that occur in that respect. So my job was to provide a commentary on those changes.

 

Why did you want to take part? What opportunities did this afford you that you wouldn’t normally get?
Even as a parent, you can only get occasional glimpses of the world of a four-year-old. What this documentary allows is access almost from the perspective of the child themselves. You get a real sense of the experience, for a four-year-old, of entering the nursery for the first time, and how very dramatic that is. Rather than studying a lot of structured research that scientists often use to understand these things, this very naturalistic observation gives you a much better impression of what it’s like to be involved in those emotional tussles for friendship, and the making and breaking of allegiances. And it gives an impression of what the children are taking away from that, how they’re learning and developing as a result of those interactions with their peers.

Children at that age can be incredibly tender and nurturing, but at the same time, their self-regulation is developing, their social skills are just developing, so the way in which they communicate with each other can be pretty harsh at times. Trying to observe that in a natural setting, the way in which they make and break those relationships, is a tremendous privilege, to be able to see that. It gives you the impression of how important this period is for them.

 

Do you have any idea of how the parents found the experience?
I think they enjoyed seeing their children in that naturalistic way, and I hope they gained some insight from it as well. One of the things we did was that, at the end of both weekends where filming took place, I wrote a short report saying what I’d observed, and how the children were developing. And I think that provided some insight – I hope – for the parents as well. And I know that the response from the parents at the screening was very positive. It’s not about parents wanting their children to be famous, it’s about them enjoying seeing them interact in that environment, being a fly on the wall, and gaining insight from it.

 

Did you learn a lot from the process? Did you see anything that really surprised you?
I suppose the thing that really struck me was the intensity of it. Even though I wasn’t interacting with the children, I found myself becoming incredibly involved, emotionally, in the narratives that were developing for each individual child. It was an emotional rollercoaster. There were times when children were rejecting each other and friendships were being formed, times when people were being isolated, sometimes for good reason, sometimes a little harshly. I suppose it really impressed upon me the drama of that experience. But I also took away from it the importance of pre-school experience as an opportunity for interacting with your peers and learning from your peers. When we’re thinking about the types of interaction children need in order to develop, we tend to think about interactions with parents or teachers or carers or other adults. What becomes very clear, watching this film, is how much they learn from each other. I think it’s incredibly important to be with other children when you’re a child.

 

Are there some ages in childhood that are more important than others, developmentally?
This is a hotly-debated topic. In the 90s we started becoming much more aware of how important the early years are. Sometimes this is linked to sensitive periods of development in the brain. There is no doubt that some early experiences can, in a positive way, have life-long outcomes. The early years are a sensitive time. But having said that, I think it’s important to recognise that children don’t develop in a linear way. Their brains don’t develop in a straight line. These sensitive periods that we know exist in the first few years of a child’s life probably also exist during adolescence, when identity develops. That’s a very important issue. So I think one has to say that all of childhood is a sensitive and special time for learning. And indeed we continue learning as adults.

 

Do you think, given a group of four-year-olds, you could say “She’s likely to be in a leadership role, he’s likely to be in manual labour, she’s likely to go to prison?”
No. I think it’s very important not to do that, and that’s one of the things the programme makers have been very careful to avoid. What we’re watching is children developing skills that will be foundational skills for them in later life. But most of their childhood is still ahead of them, and as I’ve said, there are other periods in your life when aspects of your personality are developing faster. There’s no doubt the foundational development is incredibly important. When the film was beginning to be made, the children did little tests that are supposed to be predictive of what happens in later life. But it didn’t make the final cut, and I think that’s fair enough. The danger with those sorts of predictions is that they can be very self-fulfilling, particularly when they are embedded in a documentary. It’s great credit to the film makers that they’ve been very wary and thoughtful about those sorts of issues.

 

It’s an age-old scientific question, but what has shaped these kids so far? Is it nature or nurture? Where is the current thinking?
Current thinking on nature and nurture is that it’s probably not sensible, most of the time, to talk about one without the other. It’s actually an interaction between the two. When we’re talking about the impact of nurture, or the environment, the educational environment or the nursery environment is very important. And that’s what you see coming through. In the short period that the documentary covers, you see these children learning vital lessons. It can give you a clue about who we become later as adults, but I think the most important thing is that the film emphasises the significance of childhood itself, as a time in which our skills and characters begin to form, but are not yet formed. And as well as interactions with adults, contact with other children is important, and that’s the bit we often don’t see, and that’s where this documentary really helps, in terms of providing that insight. And, of course, it is very engaging, because as adults we hide our feelings and follow protocols about dealing with each other that moderate things and keep things calm. And these children are very open about how they respond to each other. You really sense the highs and lows of discovering the social world and, critically, you really sense the struggle to develop the skills and abilities to deal with that social world.