Postdoc fellow researching cultural evolution at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science - Electronic music as Callosum - masonyoungblood.com
Mason Youngblood
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Check out our (@sobchuk.bsky.social) special issue on the cultural evolution of the arts in Evolutionary Human Sciences, with papers from @mikekestemont.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social @svalver.bsky.social and more!
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
New paper 🚨 "Cultural evolution – of the arts". Together with @masonyoungblood.bsky.social we wrote a short paper – half essay, half bibliometric analysis – aiming to describe this emerging research area (1/3) doi.org/10.1017/ehs....
Very cool paper here. I'm particularly intrigued by the finding that population size negatively predicts innovation since that has a nice resonance with some of our recent work (doi.org/10.1098/rstb...).
🎉🦜NEW PAPER ALERT 🦜🎉
Which social learning biases underly the acquisition of novel food in wild parrots ?
We (@lucymaplin.bsky.social, @bjjbarrett.bsky.social, @sonjawild.bsky.social, @drjohnmartin.bsky.social) presented >700 cockies with a novel, artificial food (🧵1/6)
Feeling very honored. CES has been my intellectual home since the first conference in 2016, and has played such a huge role in my career/life. I can’t wait for Rabat! :)
Tonight in Boston! Moderating a panel of folks on the cutting edge of animal communication research for swissnex.org/boston/event...
Great essay about a different vision for creative AI by @joelsimon.bsky.social - "Beyond Slop" www.joelsimon.net/beyond-slop
New paper out today! When baby zebra finches are tutored with manipulated songs with shuffled syllables, they transform them to be consistent with linguistic laws 🐥 Reanalysis of data from James and Sakata (2017) link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@sobchuk.bsky.social and I also wrote an intro outlining this emerging field—exciting to see just how much its expanded in the last decade, even exhibiting clusters corresponding to subfields (e.g., big data, cultural phylogenetics, film and literature, etc.)!
www.doi.org/10.1017/ehs....
New special issue on "Cultural evolution of the arts" led by @sobchuk.bsky.social and @masonyoungblood.bsky.social confirms my intuition that this field has taken off in the past two decades, with a particularly strong representation from music!
doi.org/10.1017/ehs....
Abstract. Successful climate change adaptation depends on the spread and maintenance of adaptive behaviours. Current theory suggests that the heterogeneity
Animal Cognition - Linguistic laws are increasingly used as markers of efficiency in non-human communication, but it remains unclear how rapidly these patterns can emerge. In this re-analysis of...
Adopting novel food is vital to colonize novel environments, but what is the role of social learning? Study of urban #cockatoos by @clevercockierp.bsky.social shows them to rapidly adopt novel food via #SocialLearning, with juveniles showing conformist preferences @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4uq6NVq
Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers 🧗♀️ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal 🔗 bit.ly/499QjZM
PLOS Biology
The Cultural Evolution Society is delighted to announce that Mason Youngblood (he/they) @masonyoungblood.bsky.social, Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University, is the recipient of the 2026 CES New Investigator Award.
Congratulations Mason on this well-deserved award!!
Mason Youngblood
@culturalevolsoc.bsky.social conference draft programme is up: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/CES2026
Psyched to see so much music! (at least 13 presentations on human music, plus more on bird/whale song etc.)
Pat Savage
Cultural Evolution Society
Abstract. In the Olympic sport of speed climbing, athletes compete to reach the top of a 15 m wall as quickly as possible. Since the standardization of the
