An increasing number of studies demonstrated the involvement of the cerebellum in sequence processing. The current preliminary study is the first to investigate the causal involvement of the cerebellum in sequence generation, using low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. By targeting the posterior cerebellum, we hypothesized that the induced neuro-excitability modulation would lead to altered performance on a Picture and Story sequencing task, which involve the generation of the correct chronological order of various social and non-social stories depicted in cartoons or (...) sentences. Our results indicate that participants receiving LF-rTMS over the cerebellum, as compared to sham participants, showed a stronger learning effect from pre to post stimulation for both tasks and for all types of sequences. No differences between sequence types were observed. Our results suggest a positive effect of LF-rTMS on sequence generation. We conclude that the cerebellum is causally involved in the generation of sequences of social and nonsocial events. Our discussion focuses on recommendations for future studies. (shrink)

To investigate whether people can implicitly learn regularities in a social context, we developed a new implicit sequence learning task combining elements from classic false belief and serial reaction time tasks. Participants learned that protagonists were offered flowers at four locations. The protagonists' beliefs concerning the flowers were true or false, depending on their orientation, respectively, toward the scene or away from it. Unbeknown to the participants, there was a fixed belief-related sequence involving three dimensions. Participants had to indicate as (...) fast as possible where the flowers were located, or how many flowers were given according to the protagonists. Experiment 1 combined perceptual and motor processes, whereas Experiment 2 unconfounded the sequence and motor responses, allowing to investigate pure perceptual implicit learning. For reasons of comparison, two non-social conditions were created in Experiment 2 by replacing the protagonists with two non-social objects—colored cameras or shapes. Results revealed significant implicit sequence learning of all belief-related dimensions in Experiment 1, and of true-false belief orientation in Experiment 2, even without a motor confound. Importantly, there were faster reaction times and stronger sequence learning effects in the social than in the non-social conditions. The present findings demonstrate for the first time that people are able to implicitly learn belief-related sequences. (shrink)