Knowledge is BLISS: an investigation into the transparency of BLISS symbol strings directed by a person with aphasia

Since his stroke 15 years ago, Tony O'Donnell has worked with BLISS, a symbolic, graphical language. BLISS has been used with a variety of clinical populations, including people with severe aphasia. O'Donnell found his adapted version of BLISS was meaningful to him when spoken and written English was not. The present study is part of a larger project that investigated the validity and generality of O'Donnell's belief that his adapted system would be useful for people with severe aphasia.

The first aim was to investigate whether people without aphasia and without training could match the adapted version of BLISS to pictures. The second aim was to conduct collaborative research involving researchers with and without aphasia and to explore their experiences.

The performance of 55 undergraduate students was investigated on two forced-choice matching tasks: (1) matching three pictures and three BLISS strings; and (2) selecting one of two BLISS strings to match to a picture. A semi-structured interview was conducted to obtain the researchers' perceptions of the research process.

The participants' performance across tasks showed that individuals without aphasia can match BLISS strings without training. However, there was considerable individual variation and only some participants scored significantly above chance on both tasks. The interview revealed that although this study took longer to complete, there were many positive aspects of working collaboratively. All the researchers gained personally and professionally from their involvement. Of particular interest was the realization that the researcher with aphasia had a greater ability to plan, problem solve and develop ideas than was initially thought.

Individuals without aphasia are able to match symbol strings to pictures without teaching. Further research is required to establish whether people with aphasia can similarly match the adapted version of BLISS to pictures. This study provides further evidence that people with aphasia can engage productively in the research process, even when experimental methodologies are employed.