630 MOCHIZUKI-KAWAI ET AL. RESULTS The mean attendance in the SFA programme was 2.5 sessions (attendance rate, 62.5%). Two patients did not attend the SFA programme; their data were excluded from the analysis. The mean attendance of 8 participants (4 men and 4 women, mean age: 32.4 years, mean age of onset: 19.9 years, mean Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale total score: 37.5) was 3.1 ses- sions. On average, they created ﬂoral arrangements 6.2 times over a period of 2 weeks. The ﬁrst half of the programme lasted 20 – 30 minutes each session, and the second half commenced after a short break; in the second half, all participants individually completed the ﬂoral arrangement pro- gramme within approximately 20 minutes. Four of the eight SFA treated participants had difﬁculties in making ﬂoral arrangements according to the instruction sheet in the early sessions. For instance, they placed roses in the incorrect positions on the sponge where carnations should have been placed, or stopped work when they were unable to proceed to the next part of the task. However, almost all of the four partici- pants showed improvements in their arrangement skills in the ﬁnal session. Figure 2 shows samples of ﬂoral arrangements made by the same participant. In Figure 2a, the four carnations were arranged in a disorderly way, whereas they should have been placed in a square shape (line). While, in the fourth session, the four roses were correctly placed in each corner of a square (Figure 2b). Mean times required to place one material in the second half of each session were 18.1 seconds (SD ¼ 6.9: session 1), 16.3 seconds (SD ¼ 5.1: session 2), 11.2 seconds (SD ¼ 4.5: session 3), and 14.0 seconds (SD ¼ 7.1: session 4). One-way ANOVA showed no signiﬁcant differences between sessions, F(3, 21) ¼ 1.30. Cognitive outcomes To clarify the pre to post change of scores in each group, we subtracted the individual pre score from the post score in each test, and examined the Mann-Whitney U test by using the mean score changes in the SFA and control groups. We found signiﬁcant differences in the block-tapping task of backward version (Figure 3a left, z ¼ – 2.14, p , .05) and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Copy Test (Figure 3b left, z ¼ – 2.25, p , .05). In the block- tapping task, the mean score of SFA participants signiﬁcantly increased compared to that of controls after treatment. On the other hand, control participants showed a signiﬁcant decline compared with SFA participants in the scores of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test. Additionally, the Mann-Whitney U test showed signiﬁcant differences between SFA treated and control group only in the post-test copy score (Figure 3b right, z ¼ 2.90, p , .01). SFA treated patients showed signiﬁcantly superior performance to