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

Maternal aggression (MA) towards offspring represents an early-life social stressor and has been linked to long-term behavioural differences. Yet, the cognitive mechanisms underlying its expression and potential intergenerational transmission remain unclear. We tested whether MA in domestic canaries ( Serinus canaria ) is associated with individual differences in inhibitory control (i.e., the ability to suppress impulsive or inappropriate actions) in adult females and whether early-life exposure to MA subsequently predicts variation in offspring inhibitory control. Inhibitory control was assessed using a detour task, in which individuals must suppress a direct approach to a visible reward in favour of an indirect solution. A cross-fostering design was used to disentangle post-hatching environmental effects from prenatal or genetic influences on offspring performance. We found no evidence that aggressive and non-aggressive mothers differed in inhibitory control. Likewise, offspring inhibitory control was not influenced by post-hatching exposure to MA nor by the MA phenotype of the biological mother, and we detected no mother–offspring covariation in inhibitory control. However, strong ontogenetic effects were observed: juveniles showed longer detour latencies than adults but improved more steeply across trials, consistent with a post-hatching maturation of inhibitory control. Together, these results suggest that MA in this system is unlikely to reflect deficits in inhibitory control or to be transmitted across generations via this cognitive pathway. More broadly, our findings highlight the task- and context-specific nature of inhibitory control measures.