Lyu 2014.

Methods	RCT (parallel) Recruitment took place between January 2012 and April 2014
Participants	Country: China 93 people with mild dementia (AD; CDR score 0.5 or 1.0) staying in a hospital for older adults. Experimental group: 32 participants; control group 1: 31 participants; control group 2: 30 participants Mean age: experimental group: 68.8 (SD 7.0) years; control group 1: 70.4 (SD 8.4) years; control group 2: 69.9 (SD 7.84) years Women: experimental group: 69%; control group 1: 68%; control group 2: 70%
Interventions	Experimental group: active music therapy group that included singing lyrics provided by a music therapist. Sessions were daily for 30 minutes for 3 months. Control group 1: "lyrics control group" where the same lyrics were read without music, supervised by the music therapist (daily 30 minutes for 3 months) Control group 2: "blank control group" which represented usual care
Outcomes	Cognition (overall cognitive functioning, verbal fluency, auditory verbal learning) MMSE (primary outcome) Verbal fluency: 1‐minute animal naming test (secondary outcome) Immediate recall and delayed recall: the World Health Organization‐University of California Los Angeles Auditory Verbal Learning Test (secondary outcome) Overall behavioural problems NPI, including the NPI Caregiver Distress Scale (secondary outcomes) Long‐term outcomes were assessed 3 months after treatment ended
Notes	No information reported about funding
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	Generated the random sequence by the random number table
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Not reported
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Not reported
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No missing data
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	There was no protocol published in a peer‐reviewed journal and it was not registered in any clinical trial registration platform.
Other bias	Low risk