Yosef Prat
Marie Curie Fellow
I am interested in how human language capacity emerged and how it evolved over time. Linguistic abilities are widely regarded as a hallmark of our species, yet how these skills evolved remains poorly understood. As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, I investigate the evolutionary advantages of a core feature of human language: the arbitrariness of the sign. My approach combines cross-linguistic analysis, psycholinguistic experiments, and computational modelling.
Trained as a behavioural ecologist and animal cognitive scientist, I apply an evolutionary perspective to behavioural and psychological phenomena. My previous work has spanned the vocal communication of bats, cognitive modelling of learning in cleaner fish, and the evolutionary foundations of decision-making.
Key publications
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Animals Have No Language, and Humans Are Animals Too.
Journal article
Prat Y., (2019), Perspect Psychol Sci, 14, 885 - 893
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Crowd vocal learning induces vocal dialects in bats: Playback of conspecifics shapes fundamental frequency usage by pups.
Journal article
Prat Y. et al, (2017), PLoS Biol, 15
Recent publications
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The evolution of mutually exclusive alternatives
Preprint
Prat Y. and Lamm E., (2025)
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The hard problem of meta-learning is what-to-learn.
Journal article
Prat Y. and Lamm E., (2024), Behav Brain Sci, 47
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Modelling how cleaner fish approach an ephemeral reward task demonstrates a role for ecologically tuned chunking in the evolution of advanced cognition.
Journal article
Prat Y. et al, (2022), PLoS Biol, 20
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Decision making in foraging bats.
Journal article
Prat Y. and Yovel Y., (2020), Curr Opin Neurobiol, 60, 169 - 175
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Animals Have No Language, and Humans Are Animals Too.
Journal article
Prat Y., (2019), Perspect Psychol Sci, 14, 885 - 893