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Contains fulltext : 306646.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), If you want to learn a foreign language, you usually start with learning new words. A good start would be to study them autonomously (choose yourself which words you want to learn). This is motivating, but can also be confusing. A good structure to guide your choices might be the key. In this thesis, we explored whether a brain-inspired structure could be used to enhance autonomous learning of new foreign vocabulary. We know that the word knowledge in our brain, the mental lexicon, is organized based on similarity, meaning that similar words are stored closer together than dissimilar words. We used this internal structure for our experiments and turned it inside out: we presented the to-be-learned words on a word map, sorted based on orthographic (‘written’) similarity. Our idea was that such a similarity-structure would guide autonomous learning and lead to higher learning outcomes. Our data does not clearly show that this is the case. Such a word map might only be useful depending on the map language, working memory capacities, and specific ways of presenting the similarity-structure. This thesis serves as an initial start impulse and shows how to study this further, with behavioral and possibly EEG measurements., Radboud University, 21 juni 2024, Promotores : Bekkering, H., Groot, R.H.M. de Co-promotor : Léoné, F.T.M., 214 p.

Radboud University, 19 april 2023, Promotor : Bekkering, H. Co-promotor : Mars, R.B., Contains fulltext : 291025.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)

Contains fulltext : 230367.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), This study investigates the error processing components in the EEG signal of Performers and Observers using an auditory lexical decision task, in which participants heard spoken items and decided for each item if it was a real word or not. Pairs of participants were tested in both the role of the Performer and the Observer. In the literature, an Error Related Negativity-Error Positivity complex has been identified for performed (ERN-Pe) and observed (oERN-oPe) errors. While these effects have been widely studied for performance errors in speeded decision tasks relying on visual input, relatively little is known about the performance monitoring signatures in observed language processing based on auditory input. In the lexical decision task, native Dutch speakers listened to real Dutch Words, Non-Words, and crucially, long Pseudowords that resembled words until the final syllable and were shown to be error-prone in a pilot study, because they were responded to too soon. We hypothesised that the errors in the task would result in a response locked ERN-Pe pattern both for the Performer and for the Observer. Our hypothesis regarding the ERN was not supported, however a Pe-like effect, as well as a P300 were present. Analyses to disentangle lexical and error processing similarly indicated a P300 for errors, and the results furthermore pointed to differences between responses before and after word offset. The findings are interpreted as marking attention during error processing during auditory word recognition.

12 februari 2022, Item does not contain fulltext, When learners acquire new words in a second language (L2), their lexical representations and links are initially imprecise. As new, similar words are learned, these representations must become more specific to avoid errors. This study investigated whether contrasting similar words triggers this sharpening process and facilitates learning. In a multiple-choice learning task, 114 adults acquired orthographically and semantically similar L2 (pseudo)words by either contrasting them or not. In Experiment 1, participants contrasted the L2 words, and in Experiment 2 they contrasted words in their first language. Only contrasting orthographically similar L2 words facilitated their acquisition. We conclude that contrasting underspecified representations serves as a learning mechanism that guides attention to relevant lexical information. As such, it enables learners to build more specific representations and is conducive to learning. Possibilities for further research and potential implications for L2 vocabulary instruction are discussed.

16 april 2022, Contains fulltext : 248832.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), Persons with and without autism process sensory information differently. Differences in sensory processing are directly relevant to social functioning and communicative abilities, which are known to be hampered in persons with autism. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 25 autistic individuals and 25 neurotypical individuals while they performed a silent gesture recognition task. We exploited brain network topology, a holistic quantification of how networks within the brain are organized to provide new insights into how visual communicative signals are processed in autistic and neurotypical individuals. Performing graph theoretical analysis, we calculated two network properties of the action observation network: local efficiency, as a measure of network segregation, and global efficiency, as a measure of network integration.We found that persons with autism and neurotypical persons differ in how the action observation network is organized. Persons with autism utilize a more clustered, local-processing-oriented network configuration (i.e., higher local efficiency), rather than the more integrative network organization seen in neurotypicals (i.e., higher global efficiency). These results shed new light on the complex interplay between social and sensory processing in autism.

Radboud University, 05 juli 2022, Promotores : Bekkering, H., Dijkstra, A.F.J. Co-promotores : Léoné, F.T.M., Droop, W., Item does not contain fulltext

We investigated the cognitive mechanisms underlying turn-taking joint action in 42-month-old children (Experiment 1) and adults (Experiment 2) using a behavioral task of dressing a virtual bear together. We aimed to investigate how participants represent a partners’ behavior, i.e., in terms of specific action kinematics or of action effects. The bear was dressed by pressing a smaller and a bigger button. In the Action-response task, instructions asked participants to respond to the partner by pressing the same or opposite button; in the Action-effect task they had to respond to the partner’s action effect by dressing the bear with the lacking part of the clothing, which in some cases implied pressing the same button and in other cases implied pressing the opposite button. In 50% of the trials, the partner’s association between each button and the ensuing effect (dressing the bear with t-shirt or pants) was reversed, while it never changed for participants. Both children and adults showed no effect of physical congruency of actions, but showed impaired performance in the Action-effect task if their partner achieved her effect through a different action-effect association than their own. These results suggest that, when encoding their partner’s actions, agents are influenced by action-effect associations that they learnt through their own experience. While interference led to overt errors in children, it caused longer reaction times in adults, suggesting that a flexible cognitive control (that is still in development in young children) is required to take on the partner’s perspective.

Contains fulltext : 236774.pdf (Author’s version postprint ) (Open Access), Many daily choices are based on one's own knowledge. However, when predicting other people's behavior, we need to consider the differences between our knowledge and other people's presumed knowledge. Social agents need a mechanism to use privileged information for their own behavior but exclude it from predictions of others. Using fMRI, we investigated the neural implementation of such social and personal predictions predictions in healthy human volunteers of both sexes by manipulating privileged and shared information. The medial frontal cortex appeared to have an important role in flexibly making decisions using privileged information for oneself or predicting others behavior. Specifically, we show that ventromedial prefrontal cortex tracked the state of the world independent of the type of decision (personal, social), whereas dorsomedial regions adjusted their frame of reference to the use of privileged or shared information. Sampling privileged evidence not available to the confederate also relied on specific interactions between TPJ and frontal pole.

Contains fulltext : 228761.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Cognitive neuroscience has gained significant insight into the mechanisms underlying the mental lexicon and their impact on second language vocabulary learning. However, relatively little effort has been put into understanding how these mechanisms may impact instructional practices. We attempt to bridge this gap. Towards that end, we first describe three main properties of the mental lexicon: words have distinct form and meaning representations; these representations are organized in multilingual network structures organized by similarity; and the representations differ in strength. Next, we translate the properties into a visual framework that we use to reflect upon how this knowledge affects three important choices in vocabulary instruction: composing word lists, selecting an instruction method, and consolidating newly acquired words. Lastly, we discuss opportunities for both science and practice, highlighting the importance of improving the ecological validity of scientific models and theories, and of developing instructional methods grounded in cognitive science.

Contains fulltext : 237373.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), In human communication, social intentions and meaning are often revealed in the way we move. In this study, we investigate the flexibility of human communication in terms of kinematic modulation in a clinical population, namely, autistic individuals. The aim of this study was twofold: to assess (a) whether communicatively relevant kinematic features of gestures differ between autistic and neurotypical individuals, and (b) if autistic individuals use communicative kinematic modulation to support gesture recognition. We tested autistic and neurotypical individuals on a silent gesture production task and a gesture comprehension task. We measured movement during the gesture production task using a Kinect motion tracking device in order to determine if autistic individuals differed from neurotypical individuals in their gesture kinematics. For the gesture comprehension task, we assessed whether autistic individuals used communicatively relevant kinematic cues to support recognition. This was done by using stick-light figures as stimuli and testing for a correlation between the kinematics of these videos and recognition performance. We found that (a) silent gestures produced by autistic and neurotypical individuals differ in communicatively relevant kinematic features, such as the number of meaningful holds between movements, and (b) while autistic individuals are overall unimpaired at recognizing gestures, they processed repetition and complexity, measured as the amount of submovements perceived, differently than neurotypicals do. These findings highlight how subtle aspects of neurotypical behavior can be experienced differently by autistic individuals. They further demonstrate the relationship between movement kinematics and social interaction in high-functioning autistic individuals.

Contains fulltext : 224793.pdf (preprint version ) (Open Access), Successful social interaction requires humans to predict others' behavior. To do so, internal models of others are generated based on previous observations. When predicting others' preferences for objects, for example, observations are made at an individual level (5-year old Rosie often chooses a pencil), or at a group level (kids often choose pencils). But previous research has focused either on already established group knowledge, i.e., stereotypes, or on the neural correlates of predicting traits and preferences of individuals. We identified the neural mechanisms underlying predicting individual behavior based on learned group knowledge using fMRI. We show that applying learned group knowledge hinges on both a network of regions commonly referred to as the mentalizing network, and a network of regions implicated in representing social-knowledge. Additionally, we provide evidence for the presence of a gradient in the posterior temporal cortex and the medial frontal cortex, catering to different functions while applying learned group knowledge. This process is characterized by an increased connectivity between medial prefrontal cortex and other mentalizing network regions, and increased connectivity between anterior temporal lobe and other social-knowledge regions. Our study provides insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the application of learned group knowledge.

Contains fulltext : 232366.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), Most theoretical accounts of autism posit difficulties in predicting others' actions, and this difficulty has been proposed to be at the root of autistic individuals’ social communication differences. Empirical results are mixed, however, with autistic individuals showing reduced action prediction in some studies but not in others. It has recently been proposed that this effect might be observed primarily when observed actions are less predictable, but this idea has yet to be tested. To assess the influence of predictability on neural and behavioural action prediction, the current study employed an action observation paradigm with multi-step actions that become gradually more predictable. Autistic and non-autistic adolescents showed similar patterns of motor system activation during observation, as seen in attenuated mu and beta power compared to baseline, with beta power further modulated by predictability in both groups. Bayesian statistics confirmed that action predictability influenced beta power similarly in both groups. The groups also made similar behavioural predictions, as seen in three eye-movement measures. We found no evidence that autistic adolescents responded differently than non-autistic adolescents to the predictability of an observed action. These findings show that autistic adolescents do spontaneously predict others’ actions, both neurally and behaviourally, which calls into question the role of action prediction as a key mechanism underlying autism.

Contains fulltext : 231132.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Contains fulltext : 219543.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Children who are more proficient in cooperation with peers tend to be more preferred. To date, the development of peer cooperation has been studied mainly in two research traditions, one focusing on action coordination and the other focusing on interaction quality. Both aspects of cooperation are relevant for children's peer relations, but it is unclear whether both aspects of children's earliest cooperation skills predict their later preference by peers after the transition into organized social groups in school. In this study, we assessed coordination proficiency and interaction quality of 181 Dutch children longitudinally from 2 to 4 years of age. No relation between early action coordination and later preference by peers at school was found. However, especially in girls more affiliative and fewer antagonistic behaviors at age 2 predicted likeability among classmates at school at age 4. The findings shine new light on the earliest foundations of children's peer evaluations.

Contains fulltext : 226317.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Radboud University, 13 februari 2020, Promotores : Özyürek, A., Bekkering, H. Co-promotor : Simanova, I., Contains fulltext : 215079.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Contains fulltext : 212975.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Humans are unique in their ability to communicate information through representational gestures which visually simulate an action (eg. moving hands as if opening a jar). Previous research indicates that the intention to communicate modulates the kinematics (e.g., velocity, size) of such gestures. If and how this modulation influences addressees’ comprehension of gestures have not been investigated. Here we ask whether communicative kinematic modulation enhances semantic comprehension (i.e., identification) of gestures. We additionally investigate whether any comprehension advantage is due to enhanced early identification or late identification. Participants (n = 20) watched videos of representational gestures produced in a more- (n = 60) or less-communicative (n = 60) context and performed a forced-choice recognition task. We tested the isolated role of kinematics by removing visibility of actor’s faces in Experiment I, and by reducing the stimuli to stick-light figures in Experiment II. Three video lengths were used to disentangle early identification from late identification. Accuracy and response time quantified main effects. Kinematic modulation was tested for correlations with task performance. We found higher gesture identification performance in more- compared to less-communicative gestures. However, early identification was only enhanced within a full visual context, while late identification occurred even when viewing isolated kinematics. Additionally, temporally segmented acts with more post-stroke holds were associated with higher accuracy. Our results demonstrate that communicative signaling, interacting with other visual cues, generally supports gesture identification, while kinematic modulation specifically enhances late identification in the absence of other cues. Results provide insights into mutual understanding processes as well as creating artificial communicative agents.

Contains fulltext : 216040.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Visual search often requires combining information on distinct visual features such as color and orientation, but how the visual system does this is not fully understood. To better understand this, we showed observers a brief preview of part of a search stimulus - either its color or orientation - before they performed a conjunction search task. Our experimental questions were (1) whether observers would use such previews to prioritize either potential target locations or features, and (2) which neural mechanisms might underlie the observed effects. In two experiments, participants searched for a prespecified target in a display consisting of bar elements, each combining one of two possible colors and one of two possible orientations. Participants responded by making an eye movement to the selected bar. In our first experiment, we found that a preview consisting of colored bars with identical orientation improved saccadic target selection performance, while a preview of oriented gray bars substantially decreased performance. In a follow-up experiment, we found that previews consisting of discs of the same color as the bars (and thus without orientation information) hardly affected performance. Thus, performance improved only when the preview combined color and (noninformative) orientation information. Previews apparently result in a prioritization of features and conjunctions rather than of spatial locations (in the latter case, all previews should have had similar effects). Our results thus also indicate that search for, and prioritization of, combinations involve conjunctively tuned neural mechanisms. These probably reside at the level of the primary visual cortex.

Contains fulltext : 217618.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Meaningful social interactions rest upon our ability to accurately infer and predict other people's preferences. Ireferen doing so, we can separate two sources of information: knowledge we have about the particular individual (individual knowledge) and knowledge we have about the social group to which that individual belongs (categorical knowledge). However, it is yet unclear how these two types of knowledge contribute to making predictions about other people's choice behavior. To fill this gap, we had participants learn probabilistic preferences by predicting object choices of agents with and without a common logo printed on their shirt. The logo thereby served as a visual cue to increase perceptions of groupness. We quantified how similar predictions for a specific agent are relative to the objective individual-level preferences of that agent and how close these predictions are relative to the objective group-level preferences to which that agent belongs. We found that the logo influenced how close participants' predictions were to the individual-level preferences of an agent relative to the preferences of the group the agent belongs to. We interpret this pattern of results as indicative of a differential weighting of individual and categorical group knowledge when making predictions about individuals that are perceived as forming a social group. The results are interpreted in an assimilation account of categorization and stress the importance of group knowledge during daily social interactions.

Contains fulltext : 212931.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Social interaction requires us to recognize subtle cues in behavior, such as kinematic differences in actions and gestures produced with different social intentions. Neuroscientific studies indicate that the putative mirror neuron system (pMNS) in the premotor cortex and mentalizing system (MS) in the medial prefrontal cortex support inferences about contextually unusual actions. However, little is known regarding the brain dynamics of these systems when viewing communicatively exaggerated kinematics. In an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, 28 participants viewed stick-light videos of pantomime gestures, recorded in a previous study, which contained varying degrees of communicative exaggeration. Participants made either social or nonsocial classifications of the videos. Using participant responses and pantomime kinematics, we modeled the probability of each video being classified as communicative. Interregion connectivity and activity were modulated by kinematic exaggeration, depending on the task. In the Social Task, communicativeness of the gesture increased activation of several pMNS and MS regions and modulated top-down coupling from the MS to the pMNS, but engagement of the pMNS and MS was not found in the nonsocial task. Our results suggest that expectation violations can be a key cue for inferring communicative intention, extending previous findings from wholly unexpected actions to more subtle social signaling.

Radboud University, 21 februari 2020, Promotores : Hunnius, S., Bekkering, H., Contains fulltext : 214871.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Contains fulltext : 219417.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Internal error monitoring as reflected by the error-related negativity (ERN) component can give insight in the L2 learning process. Yet, beginning stages of learning are characterized by high levels of uncertainty, which obscures the process of error detection. We examine how uncertainty about L2 syntactic representations, induced by different levels of language conflict, is reflected in the ERN effect during learning. German learners of Dutch performed a feedback-guided gender decision task in their L2 and were asked to give subjective certainty ratings for their responses. Results indicate that initially, high conflict items yielded more uncertainty and showed an inverse ERN effect, i.e., larger negativities for correct compared to erroneous responses. Two rounds of feedback resulted in an increase of behavioural accuracy, lower levels of uncertainty, and an expected ERN effect, signalling effective error monitoring. These outcomes demonstrate how subjective intuitions about response accuracy affect performance monitoring during L2 learning.

Radboud University, 26 november 2020, Promotor : Bekkering, H., Contains fulltext : 226306.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Contains fulltext : 201731.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Actions are important. We need to know how to do all sorts of actions in our everyday lives, like using a fork to eat and using a pen to write. We have an easier time understanding the actions we see other people do if we have done the same actions before ourselves. It helps us understand why other people choose to use the same action. Adults know lots of different actions, but babies are still learning how to do many things. They are just learning how to move around and how to play with toys. Babies also understand more about actions they have done before than actions they have not done. Is there something happening in their brains that might help them understand the actions they have done? Do babies’ brains respond differently when they see an action they know how to do compared with one they have never done? Let us find out.

41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2019) (Montreal, Canada, 24-27 July 2019), Item does not contain fulltext, We aim to apply cognitive neuroscience insights to vocabulary learning practice. Towards this end, we review current educational methods in relation to important characteristics of the mental lexicon, such as similarity-coding. This shows that methods relate poorly to the mental lexicon, and that especially contrasting - explicitly distinguishing similarities - receives little attention. To remedy this, we run experiments to put these findings into practice. First, we ask participants to learn artificial vocabulary using retrieval practice multiple-choice, manipulating the orthographic and semantic similarity of distractors. The prediction is that learning will be harder but more effective depending on similarity and translation direction. Second, we test whether participants show indications of gradient descent learning when guessing in recall retrieval practice. Thirdly, we use cognitive neuroscience and large scale word learning data to model the mental lexicon. Combined, these studies potentially offer relevant scientific and societal insights, applicable to school settings.

Contains fulltext : 203654.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), From early on in life, children are able to use information from their environment to form predictions about events. For instance, they can use statistical information about a population to predict the sample drawn from that population and infer an agent’s preferences from systematic violations of random sampling. We investigated whether and how young children infer an agent’s sampling biases. Moreover, we examined whether pupil data of toddlers follow the predictions of a computational model based on the causal Bayesian network formalization of predictive processing. We formalized three hypotheses about how different explanatory variables (i.e., prior probabilities, current observations, and agent characteristics) are used to predict others’ actions. We measured pupillary responses as a behavioral marker of 'prediction errors' (i.e., the perceived mismatch between what one’s model of an agent predicts and what the agent actually does). Pupillary responses of 24-month-olds, but not 18-month-olds, showed that young children integrated information about current observations, priors and agents to make predictions about agents and their actions. These findings shed light on the mechanisms behind toddlers' inferences about agent-caused events. To our knowledge, this is the first study in which young children's pupillary responses are used as markers of prediction errors, which were qualitatively compared to the predictions by a computational model based on the causal Bayesian network formalization of predictive processing.

Item does not contain fulltext, We investigated the cognitive mechanisms underlying turn-taking joint action in 42-month-old children (Experiment 1) and adults (Experiment 2) using a behavioral task of dressing a virtual bear together. We aimed to investigate how participants represent a partners' behavior, i.e., in terms of specific action kinematics or of action effects. The bear was dressed by pressing a smaller and a bigger button. In the Action-response task, instructions asked participants to respond to the partner by pressing the same or opposite button; in the Action-effect task they had to respond to the partner's action effect by dressing the bear with the lacking part of the clothing, which in some cases implied pressing the same button and in other cases implied pressing the opposite button. In 50% of the trials, the partner's association between each button and the ensuing effect (dressing the bear with t-shirt or pants) was reversed, while it never changed for participants. Both children and adults showed no effect of physical congruency of actions, but showed impaired performance in the Action-effect task if their partner achieved her effect through a different action-effect association than their own. These results suggest that, when encoding their partner's actions, agents are influenced by action-effect associations that they learnt through their own experience. While interference led to overt errors in children, it caused longer reaction times in adults, suggesting that a flexible cognitive control (that is still in development in young children) is required to take on the partner's perspective.

Contains fulltext : 202866.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), When processing information about human faces, we have to integrate different sources of information like skin colour and emotional expression. In 3 experiments, we investigated how these features are processed in a top-down manner when task instructions determine the relevance of features, and in a bottom-up manner when the stimulus features themselves determine process priority. In Experiment 1, participants learned to respond with approach-avoidance movements to faces that presented both emotion and colour features (e.g. happy faces printed in greyscale). For each participant, only one of these two features was task-relevant while the other one could be ignored. In contrast to our predictions, we found better learning of task-irrelevant colour when emotion was task-relevant than vice versa. Experiment 2 showed that the learning of task-irrelevant emotional information was improved in general when participants' awareness was increased by adding NoGo-trials. Experiment 3 replicated these results for faces and emotional words. We conclude that during the processing of faces, both bottom-up and top-down processes are involved, such that task instructions and feature characteristics play a role. Ecologically significant features like emotions are not necessarily processed with high priority. The findings are discussed in the light of theories of attention and cognitive biases.

Item does not contain fulltext, When seeing people perform actions, we are able to quickly predict the action's outcomes. These predictions are not solely based on the observed actions themselves but utilize our prior knowledge of others. It has been suggested that observed outcomes that are not in line with these predictions result in prediction errors, which require additional processing to be integrated or updated. However, there is no consensus on whether this is indeed the case for the kind of high-level social–cognitive processes involved in action observation. In this fMRI study, we investigated whether observation of unexpected outcomes causes additional activation in line with the processing of prediction errors and, if so, whether this activation overlaps with activation in brain areas typically associated with social–cognitive processes. In the first part of the experiment, participants watched animated movies of two people playing a bowling game, one experienced and one novice player. In cases where the player's score was higher or lower than expected based on their skill level, there was increased BOLD activity in areas that were also activated during a theory of mind task that participants performed in the second part of the experiment. These findings are discussed in the light of different theoretical accounts of human social–cognitive processing.

Contains fulltext : 198763.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access), Recent research has suggested that all types of size-related information are linked by a generalised system that codes for domain-independent magnitudes. This generalized system is further suggested to be acquired through everyday sensorimotor experiences with contingencies of size-related information in the real world. The aim of the present study was to investigate the existence of this common representation and its impact on the coupling of perception and action in early childhood. According to an embodied view on magnitude representation, an association between perceived magnitude information and size-related motor features, such as applied motor force, should emerge as soon as motor control is sufficiently developed. This hypothesis was tested in 2.5- to 3-year-old toddlers by engaging them in a computer game-like experimental task in which they were required to move objects placed on a platform upwards by pressing a button. The amount of objects was varied systematically (small amount: 3 vs. large amount: 15) and the force children applied on the button while moving the objects was recorded. Importantly, the amount of applied force was not relevant for successfully playing the game. The analysis of the peak force revealed that motor responses were executed more forcefully when children were presented with a large amount of objects compared to a small amount, irrespective of the toddler's motor abilities which were evaluated by two additional measures (force control and general fine motor skills). This general effect of perceived magnitude information on the task-irrelevant applied motor force confirms our notion that a link between perceptual and motor magnitudes exists already in early childhood and provides new evidence for a sensorimotor grounding of magnitude concepts.

Radboud University, 30 januari 2019, Promotor : Bekkering, H. Co-promotor : Schutter, D.J.L.G., Contains fulltext : 200819.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Contains fulltext : 205956.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Humans generate internal models of their environment to predict events in the world. As the environments change, our brains adjust to these changes by updating their internal models. Here, we investigated whether and how 9-month-old infants differentially update their models to represent a dynamic environment. Infants observed a predictable sequence of stimuli, which were interrupted by two types of cues. Following the update cue, the pattern was altered, thus, infants were expected to update their predictions for the upcoming stimuli. Because the pattern remained the same after the no-update cue, no subsequent updating was required. Infants showed an amplified negative central (Nc) response when the predictable sequence was interrupted. Late components such as the PSW were also evoked in response to unexpected stimuli; however, we found no evidence for a differential response to the informational value of surprising cues at later stages of processing. Infants rather learned that surprising cues always signal a change in the environment that requires updating. Interestingly, infants responded with an amplified neural response to the absence of an expected change, suggesting a top-down modulation of early sensory processing in infants. Our findings corroborate emerging evidence showing that infants build predictive models early in life.