Cerebellar involvement in motor and non-motor sequence learning was
examined with serial reaction time tasks (SRT). Our sample consisted of 8
children and adolescents who had undergone surgical removal of a benign
posterior fossa tumor (PFT) during childhood. None of them had undergone
chemotherapy or cranial radiation therapy (CRT). Ages ranged from
1–11 years at surgery and 9–17 years at testing. The children
were tested not earlier than 2.5 years after surgery (M = 5.9
years), enabling brain plasticity and recovery of functions. Their
performance was compared with a matched control sample. The PFT group was
not impaired in the implicit learning of sequences, as reflected in their
performance in blocks with a repeated sequence, both before and after a
random block. However, in the perceptual task, their performance
deteriorated more than that of the control group when a random block was
introduced, suggesting that it was more difficult for the patients to
respond flexibly or change their response set when encountering changing
task demands. These results are in line with another study by our group on
task switching with the same patients. (JINS, 2005, 11,
482–487.)