Emerging evidence suggests that Theory of Mind
(ToM) is related to some aspects of children's temperament.
Specifically, recent studies have shown that false belief
understanding is positively related to shyness and with-
drawn behavior and negatively associated with aggressive
conduct. However, still little is known about which other
aspects of temperament are related to children's ability to
understand others' mental states. In the present study, we
aimed to investigate relations between false belief under-
standing and temperament in preschool children. In the first
phase of our research (T1), we administered a false belief
task to 101 3- and 4- year-old Italian children. In the second
phase (T2), 69 children belonging to the original sample
were assessed again at 5 and 6 years of age, and their
temperament was evaluated through parental ratings. Cor-
relational analyses and independent-samples t-tests revealed
significant positive relations of false belief understanding to
inhibitory control and negative relations to motor activity/
hyperactivity and anger/frustration (even though the latter
was only marginal), whereas no relation was found to
attention control. These results confirm and extend findings
from previous studies. Unexpectedly, we did not find any significant association with shyness, despite evidence to the
contrary from recent research. Overall, our findings show
that false belief understanding relates differently to various
dimensions of temperament in the preschool period and
highlight the importance of conducting further investigation
on the relation between ToM and temperament.

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• Relations between Temperament and False Belief Understanding in the Preschool Age