Recent research has indicated that the cerebellum is responsible for social judgments, such as making trait attributions. The present study investigated the function of the posterior cerebellum in supporting sequence learning linked to trait inferences about persons. We conducted a memory paradigm that required participants to learn a given temporal order of six behavioral sentences that all implied the same personality trait of the protagonist. We then asked participants to infer the trait of the person and to recall the correct order of the sentences and to rate their confidence in their trait judgments and retrieval accuracy. Two control conditions were created: a nonsocial comparison control, involving six nonsocial sentences implying a feature of an object, and a nonsocial nonsequential reading baseline condition. While learning the specific sequence of the sentences, the posterior cerebellum (Crus 2) was more activated for social trait-related sequencing than nonsocial object-related sequencing. Also, given a longer duration to learn the sequences, the precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex were more activated when participants attempted to retrieve the sequences linked to social traits. In addition, confidence in retrieving the correct order of the social sequences modulated the posterior cerebellum (Crus 1) given a longer duration to learn. Our findings highlight the important function of the posterior cerebellum in supporting an active process of sequencing trait-implying actions.

最近的研究表明，小脑负责社会判断，例如做出特质归因。本研究调查了小脑后部在支持与人的特质推断相关的序列学习中的功能。我们进行了一种记忆范式，要求参与者学习六个行为句子的给定时间顺序，这些句子都暗示了主角的相同人格特征。然后，我们要求参与者推断该人的特征并回忆句子的正确顺序，并评估他们对自己特征判断和检索准确性的信心。创建了两个控制条件：一个非社会比较控制，涉及六个暗示物体特征的非社会句子，以及一个非社会非顺序阅读基线条件。在学习句子的特定顺序时，与非社会对象相关的测序相比，后小脑（Crus 2）对于社会特征相关的测序更加活跃。此外，如果学习序列的时间较长，当参与者试图检索与社会特征相关的序列时，楔前叶和后扣带皮层会更加激活。此外，在较长的学习时间下，检索社会序列正确顺序的信心会调节小脑后部（小腿 1）。我们的研究结果强调了后小脑在支持对暗示性状的行为进行排序的主动过程中的重要功能。