The effects of personalisation on young children's spontaneous speech during shared book reading

•We investigated effects of personalised books on children's verbal behaviour.•We found that personalisation initiates more spontaneous speech.•Self-referencing was greater with personalised than non-personalised books.•Personalised books affected some key processes implicated in language development.

This paper is concerned with a so far little explored situational context: sharing books which have been personalised for individual children in a pre-school. Thirty-five children (mean age 36.94 months) were read a book with a personalised and non-personalised part. Their spontaneous verbal responses were video recorded and later transcribed. The analysis focused on the difference between the personalised and non-personalised context in terms of the amount of children's utterances and the pragmatic intent of their speech, which included self-referencing, use of questions and corrections. The findings are interpreted from both developmental and socio-cultural Vygotskian perspectives, and evaluated in light of their implications for the understanding of pragmatic aspects of sharing personalised books with children.