Preprocessed behavioral data from: Volitional spatial attention is lateralized in crows

Like humans and many other animal species, birds exhibit left-right asymmetries in certain behaviors due to differences in hemispheric brain functions. While the lateralization of sensory and motor functions is well established in birds, the potential lateralization of high-level executive control functions, such as volitional attention, remains unknown. Here, we demonstrate that carrion crows exhibit more pronounced volitional (endogenous) attention for stimuli monocularly viewed with the left eye and thus in the left visual hemifield. We trained four crows on Posner-like spatial cueing tasks using informative cues to evaluate their volitional top-down attention. The crows detected cued targets using either the left or right eye. As a measure of volitional attention, we calculated reaction time differences for detecting targets that were correctly (validly) and incorrectly (invalidly) cued, separately for the left and right visual hemifields. We found that cued targets were detected mo..., , , # Preprocessed behavioral data from: Volitional spatial attention is lateralized in crows

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3j9kd51tm](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3j9kd51tm)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains all preprocessed behavioral data that is presented and analyzed in the corresponding manuscript. We trained four carrion crows (Corvus corone) in an operant conditioning chamber on two versions of a spatial cueing task and measured reaction times (**RT** [ms]) and target detection accuracies (Acc. [% correct]).

Throughout the Task, Crows fixated their head position in a predefined area in front of a central monitor where experimental Stimuli were presented. On the side walls of the conditioning chamber, Stimuli were additionally presented on a Right- and a left-side screen. For all Crows, the Basic Task flow was as follows: Crows entered Fixation to start a Trial. Next, a spatial cue was briefly presented for 50 ms on one of the side screens (per...