Welfringer 2011.

Methods	RCT. Designed as a feasibility study Setting; Germany
Participants	30 participants with right‐hemisphere stroke, less than 6 months previously Inclusion criteria: had a diagnosis of right‐hemispheric stroke dated less than 6 months earlier; had no history of major psychiatric problems and no other co‐existing disease/disability; showed unilateral left visuospatial neglect symptoms as defined by a score of 54 or less on the Letter Cancellation Test; had no diagnosis of hemianopia; had sufficient sensory, physical and cognitive capacities to follow instructions for more than 30 minutes and no additional verbal‐memory deficits as defined by a percentage rank above 16 in the story recall sub‐test of the Wechsler‐Memory‐Scale‐Revised (WMS‐R); were aged between 20 and 75 years; were right‐handed; and had provided informed consent Experimental: n = 15; mean age 56.3 years (SD 11.2); mean time since stroke: 3.2 months (SD 1.5) Control: n = 15; mean age 57.3 years (SD 11.3): mean time since stroke: 3.4 months (SD 2.8)
Interventions	Visuomotor‐imagery therapy (2 daily half‐hour sessions of visuomotor‐imagery therapy as an add‐on treatment over a period of 3 weeks; participants mentally practised positions and movements of the contralesional upper limb in a repetitive fashion and as vividly and intensively as possible; over the course of the 3‐week intervention period, they participated in 28 to 30 training sessions; a total of 4 positions and 6 sequences (simple and complex movements) were imagined, with 1 exercise being repeated up to 10 times per session) versus no supplementary intervention All participants received standardised rehabilitation therapies including 45 minutes of exploration training 4 times per week For analysis of bottom‐up and top‐down rehabilitation approaches this review coded the experimental condition as top‐down
Outcomes	Neglect tests: Bells Cancellation test; drawing tasks; text‐reading task Representation tests: test of mental representation of left side of body Arm function texts: sensation of left arm; Action Research Arm Test For analyses within this review we used: neglect ‐ Bells Cancellation Test
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	Blocked randomisation, in blocks of 10; computer‐generated sequence, delivered by person independent of intervention
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	States: "Outcome measures were assessed by a blinded tester."
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No loss to follow‐up
Free of systematic differences in baseline characteristics of groups compared?	Low risk	No differences noted between groups
Did authors adjust for baseline differences in their analyses?	Low risk	Not necessary