Data processing apparatus comprises processing circuitry to selectively apply vector processing operations to one or more data items of a data vector comprising a plurality of data items at respective positions in the data vector, according to the state of respective predicate flags associated with the positions; the processing circuitry comprising: instruction decoder circuitry to decode program instructions; and instruction processing circuitry to execute instructions decoded by the instruction decoder circuitry; wherein the instruction decoder circuitry is responsive to a WHILE instruction and a CHANGE instruction, to control the instruction processing dependent upon a number of the predicate flags.