Professor lifts the lid on the Secret Life of 4 and 5 Year Olds again

An award-winning documentary series, featuring the University of Bristol’s Professor Paul Howard-Jones, returns to our screens again tomorrow night [Tuesday 7 November].

The Secret Life of 4 and 5 Year Olds has won plaudits for its insights into what goes on when parents drop their little ones at the nursery gates. The series kicks off on Channel 4 at 8pm tomorrow.

Professor Howard-Jones, a leading educational neuroscientist, is one of the experts on hand to analyse and comment on the children's behaviour and development.

The series is filmed in a specially rigged school in North East London, where a new batch of four and five-year-olds from up and down the UK attend the all-new Secret Life nursery.

As each of the new children meet one another for the first time, experts observe how they interact, play together – sometimes harmoniously, sometimes less so – and learn essential skills that they will continue to develop through to adulthood.

Kicking off the series with the four-year-olds, the show explores how the age group learn to recognise and deal with emotions. The second episode uncovers how friendship and romance develop in the playground and what happens when four-year-olds fall out.

Later in the series, the spotlight moves onto the five-year-olds, showing how personalities develop at this age, as children establish their identity within the group. It also looks at how five-year-olds learn to deal with risk, uncovering how they overcome fear and display bravery.

Professor Howard-Jones, from the School of Education, said: "As a scientist, being able to hear the conversations of children as they step out into the social world has been a real privilege. It's been very exciting and enriching at a personal level, but there's a serious research opportunity here too.

"We've just received the entire audio files from last season's series - and begun archiving and analysing this unique database at the University of Bristol - to understand more about children's spontaneous talk."

Read Channel 4’s interview with Professor Howard-Jones about the new series.