By Dave DeFusco
At the Katz School’s Graduate Symposium on Science, Technology and Health, Kayla Bissell, a student in the M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology, presented compelling research on a topic that strikes at the heart of early childhood development: “The Intergenerational Effects of Parental Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on a Child’s Development.”
Her systematic review explored how a mother’s exposure to trauma in her own childhood may impair her child’s language, emotional and behavioral development, laying the groundwork for a cycle of vulnerability that can span generations.
“What we found is that maternal ACEs don’t just affect the individual who experienced them, they echo into the lives of their children in measurable, developmental ways, particularly in language acquisition and emotional regulation,” said Bissell. “Our goal was to connect the dots between trauma, parenting and the way children learn to communicate, regulate emotions and succeed socially.”
Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood, including various forms of abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence, exposure to substance abuse or mental illness, incarceration of a family member and the loss of a parent. According to researchers, about 26% of children in the United States will witness or endure a traumatic event before the age of 4.
ACEs can result in “toxic stress,” a chronic activation of the body’s stress response system, which disrupts neurodevelopment, impairs cognitive functions and dysregulates emotional and behavioral responses. Over time, children exposed to this level of stress may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors and suffer from health issues like obesity, depression and chronic diseases.
Bissell conducted a systematic review of 17 peer-reviewed articles to examine how a mother’s ACEs affect her child’s early development, especially in areas such as expressive and receptive language, emotional self-regulation and social-pragmatic communication.
“We were asking, ‘If maternal ACEs go up, do language outcomes in the child go down?’ and repeatedly, the research said yes,” said Bissell.
She cited other research showing that children whose parents had experienced three or more ACEs were significantly more likely to have developmental delays, particularly in communication and problem-solving. More striking, the researchers identified a dose-response relationship: for every additional ACE in a parent’s history, the child’s risk of developmental delays increased by 18%. Children of mothers with two or more ACEs were more than twice as likely to show developmental delays.
The implications for speech-language pathologists are particularly urgent. Researchers in the field used the Preschool Language Scale-Fifth Edition (PLS-5) to establish a direct relationship between maternal ACEs and lower language competence in toddlers. “These findings provide some of the first empirical evidence that trauma experienced by one generation can limit how the next generation learns to use and understand language,” said Bissell.
The same study found that after children received at least 56% of their prescribed speech therapy sessions, the correlation between maternal ACEs and language deficits weakened significantly, offering a hopeful sign that timely intervention can disrupt this inherited disadvantage.
Dr. Elisabeth Mlawski, a clinical associate professor in the speech pathology program, praised Bissell’s work for its depth, relevance and urgency.
“Kayla’s project makes an important contribution to how we understand childhood development through a trauma-informed lens,” she said. “It reminds us that language delays and behavioral issues are often rooted in complex, multigenerational dynamics. This has profound implications for how we train clinicians, design early intervention programs and approach family engagement.”
