Social interactions are crucial for imitative vocal learning such as human speech learning or song learning in songbirds. Recently, introducing specific learned modifications into adult song by experimenter-controlled reinforcement learning has emerged as a key protocol to study aspects of vocal learning in songbirds. This form of adult plasticity does not require conspecifics as a model for imitation or to provide social feedback on song performance. We therefore hypothesized that social interactions are irrelevant to, or even inhibit, song modification learning. We tested whether social context affects song sequence learning in adult male Bengalese finches (