## Introduction ## Pediatric stroke occurs during a sensitive period in development and often affects higher-level cognitive and linguistic processes. Incidence has been recorded at 1 in 4000 live births (Fuentes et al., 2016). Half of children receive one or more learning or psychological diagnoses post-stroke (Williams et al., 2017). In typically developing bilingual children, theories of linguistic and cognitive advantages have been confirmed in behavioural studies. Protective effects of bilingualism have also been demonstrated in bilingual Alzheimer’s Disease patients (Craik et al., 2010). Atypically developing bilingual children may be able to benefit similarly (Fay et al., 2010; Fuentes et al., 2010). Our research evaluates the effects of bilingual language exposure, prior and poststroke, on the performance in cognitive and linguistic measures in pediatric stroke patients. ## Methods ## We hypothesise that bilingual children will benefit from protective factors, thanks to their bilingual environment. Potential interactions between the patient (e.g., age, sex, socio-economic status), linguistic (e.g., language exposure), and neural (e.g., stroke characteristics) variables that affect children’s cognitive and linguistic processing after stroke will be evaluated. The Canadian Pediatric Ischemic Stroke Registry (CPISR) and medical charts will be used to gather variable and performance data, with neurocognitive measures evaluated at 6 months and 1-year post-stroke. Perinatal and childhood arterial ischemic stroke patients aged 0-17 years will be sampled based on database query and statistical analyses needed. Children with presumed/recurrent/fetal stroke, preterm birth, prenatal exposure to drugs/alcohol, history of epilepsy, premorbid psychological or learning disorder and/or developmental/congenital diseases are excluded to avoid confounding variables. ## Projected Analyses ## 440 files of children with arterial ischemic stroke are currently available in the CPISR. Currently, data organization is being conducted. Regression analyses will be conducted to account for the independent variables mentioned above, using dependent variable of neurocognitive scores and predictors of linguistic and stroke characteristic variables. We plan to consider a slope of recovery and explore interacting effects with bilingual exposure. As retrospective data is being used, analyses will consider availability of data. ## Summary ## We aim to test the applicability of current theory, based on typically developing bilinguals, to atypical populations. Future research on bilingual neural and cognitive development informed by our results on cognitive-language areas that are affected/enhanced, may also be developed. Gaining a better understanding bilingual neural and cognitive processing and brain-behaviour relationships in children is crucial, as about half of children around the globe are bilinguals.