Theory of Mind Training and Autism Ranking:

We have identified more than 20 scientific studies of theory of mind training programmes in peer-reviewed journals published in English.

The studies included a total of more than 600 autistic individuals aged from 4 years old to adult.

The majority of the studies reported positive results. For example, Paynter and Petersen (2013) reported “Results from 24 children with ASD aged 4.67–12.25 years revealed even stronger evidence than previously that thought-bubble training is genuinely beneficial in the context of autism. Statistically significant gains were made by trained children that, furthermore, (a) generalized beyond false-belief to other ToM concepts and (b) were maintained for at least 3 weeks.”
Some of the studies reported positive results but these positive results did not generalise (transfer) to situations or settings outside of the original training. For example, Hadwin (1990) reported that “teaching effects did not generalize to tasks in domains where children received no teaching. In addition, no significant progress in spontaneous pretend play resulted from teaching.”
A minority of the studies reported limited or mixed results. For example, Williams et al (2012) reported “The Transporters programme showed limited efficacy in teaching basic emotion recognition skills to young children with autism with a lower range of cognitive ability. Improvements were limited to the recognition of expressions of anger, with poor maintenance of these skills at follow-up.”
One of the studies, Hadwin (1997), reported no effects. “Results showed that no discernible improvement was seen on either measure of communication following mental state teaching.”

There are a number of limitations to all of the research studies on theory of mind training published to date. For example

Some of the studies – such as Feng et al. (2008), Cheng et al. (2010) and LaCava et al (2010) – had a very small number of participants
Some of the studies – such as Gevers et al. (2006), Swettenham (1996), and Thomeer et al. (2011) were open label trials with no comparison control group
Some of the controlled studies – such as Fisher and Happé (2005), Ozonoff and Miller (1995), Paynter and Peterson (2013) - were non-randomised
Some of the randomised controlled studies – such as Hadwin et al. (1996), Rice et al. (2015) and Thomeer et al. (2015) - were non-blinded.

For a comprehensive list of potential flaws in research studies, please see "Why some autism research studies are flawed."

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