No evidence for a link between maternal aggression and inhibitory control across generations in domestic canaries (Dataset)

This dataset contains behavioural data collected from domestic canaries (Serinus canaria) tested in a detour task designed to assess inhibitory control (response inhibition). Data were collected at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) during the 2024 breeding season as part of a larger transgenerational study on maternal aggression (MA) in this species.
The dataset includes detour task performance records for two groups: adult breeding females tested before the breeding season, and their juvenile offspring tested at approximately 44–45 days of age. A cross-fostering design was applied at clutch completion, allowing biological and foster mother effects on offspring performance to be statistically disentangled. For each individual and trial, the dataset includes detour latency (seconds from test box entry to barrier circumvention), total time spent persisting at the barrier (cumulative seconds inside the barrier zone of interest), and a multi-baseline motivational measure (mean latency to reach the food bowl across habituation trials 2 and 3 with an opaque barrier). Individual identifiers, nest of origin, foster nest, maternal aggression phenotype of the biological and foster mother (binary: MA / noMA), sex, age class (adult / juvenile), test session (1 or 2), trial number (1–3 within session), and barrier type (horizontal / vertical) and order are also included. Maternal aggression was defined as feather plucking directed towards at least one nestling, scored from video recordings of nest checks conducted daily from day 14 post-hatch. Baseline food-approach motivation for adult females (latency to feed during the first habituation trial) is provided as a supplementary variable. All raw values are included without winsorisation or transformation; any processing steps applied during analysis are described in the reproducibility notes below.