Lin 2009b

Methods	Randomised controlled trial Randomisation procedure and allocation concealment not reported
Participants	33 participants Inclusion criteria: clinical diagnosis of a first or recurrent unilateral stroke; ability to reach Brunnstrom stage III or above in the proximal and distal part of the arm; no serious cognitive deficits (MMSE ≥ 24); no excessive spasticity in the affected arm (Modified Ashworth Scale score ≤ 2 in any joint); no other neurologic, neuromuscular or orthopaedic disease; lack of participation in any experimental rehabilitation or drug studies
Interventions	Group 1 (17 participants): usual care (dose‐matched standard occupational therapy that also focused on upper extremity training and included neurodevelopmental techniques, trunk‐arm control, weight bearing by the affected arm, fine motor tasks practice and practice on compensatory strategies) Group 2 (16 participants): bilateral training; both upper extremities moving simultaneously in functional tasks with symmetric patterns Both groups received training for 2 hours per day, 5 days a week for 3 weeks Occupational therapists provided the interventions
Outcomes	Primary outcome: performance in activities of daily living: Functional independence measure Primary outcome: functional movement ‐ Motor Activity Log: amount of use and quality of movement scales (amount of use scale selected) Secondary outcome: motor impairment ‐ motor impairment scales: Fugl‐Meyer scale; temporal outcomes: movement time and percentage of movement time at which peak velocity occurs for unilateral and bilateral reaching task (movement time for unilateral task selected); spatial outcomes: normalised total distance Sub‐categories of the Functional Independence Measure are presented We only used the total score as most relevant to this review
Notes	Adjusted means (controlling for pre‐treatment differences) and post‐treatment means were presented. We used adjusted means for all outcomes Standard deviation was taken from the post‐treatment columns Movement time and spatial outcome data inverted for analysis (multiplied by ‐1)
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Allocation concealment?	Unclear risk	Not reported
Blinding of outcome assessor?	Low risk	Occupational therapists blind to group assignment were trained to complete the outcome assessments
Intention to treat analysis?	Unclear risk	Not reported; no drop‐outs
Baseline similarity	Low risk	Baseline characteristics were comparable No significant differences between the groups for age, months since stroke, side of stroke lesion, or initial upper limb impairment