This study investigated parent-child reading of books with personalised and non-personalised features. Parents and children were invited to the research laboratory and asked to read a digital book that contained personalised and non-personalised features. There were new words embedded in both sections of the book. We measured whether children will learn more new words as a result of personalisation. We were also interested in potential differences in parent-child interaction around the book.The ubiquity of handheld digital technologies and dramatic rise in digital book reading in England and USA have led to a heightened commercial interest in personalised tablet and smartphone digital books (DPBs) for 3 to 5-year-old children. However, the educational value of many of these resources is questionable. There is a lack of developmentally-appropriate DPBs to enhance children's early reading experience, and a lack of knowledge regarding how parents and educators can best support children's learning with digital media. The proposed research responds to these issues by investigating how children's language development and reading experience can be enhanced by using digital personalised books. It will also identify effective strategies for parents and early educators to support children's early reading with digital technology. The study will begin by developing a system for identifying and rating the personalisation features of children's digital books that are potentially effective for enhancing children's early language and literacy development. Parents, early years teachers and app designers will be interviewed to gain their perspectives on the possibilities and challenges of personalisation in children's digital books. Observations will be made of naturally-occurring parent-child reading practices with DPBs in five UK homes, over a 6-month period. These will be followed by rigorous experimental evaluation of thirty children's immediate and enduring language development and reading interest through reading DPBs. The resultant dataset will be scrutinised to clarify the potential of personalisation features in digital software for promoting children's language development and independent reading, and to identify effective strategies for motivating children's co-reading with their parents at home and with early educators. Throughout the project, international experts in early language and literacy will support the development of 1) theoretical understanding of the under-researched yet educationally potent area of personalisation features in children's digital books 2) an innovative, interdisciplinary and rigorous methodological framework, with original qualitative and quantitative datasets for supporting parent-child and early educator-child co-reading with DPBs, and 3) a bank of recommendations and resources for supporting children's language and early literacy learning through DPBs for parents, teachers, policy-makers, and digital book and app producers.

This study used an experimental design and video data collection methods. The parent-child conversation was professionally transcribed. Study procedure: Parents and their children were invited to read the target book in the university lab. Upon arrival to the lab, parent and child were made comfortable and offered to play a simple game using blocks/toys available in the lab. They were then encouraged to read the target book. The target book was kept on the researcher’s iPad who explained how to turn pages and navigate the book. The reading was filmed with a video-camera placed in the corner of the room. The Research Assistant explained that there are no right or wrong ways of reading books with children. The reading lasted not more than 30 minutes per participating dyad. After the reading session, the child was asked a series of questions about the target words embedded in the digital book.