Laboratory studies have revealed that social factors are key in bird-song learning. Nevertheless, little is known about how or why birds choose the songs they do learn from the many they will hear under natural conditions. We focus on various theories concerning social song learning that have been offered to date, with special attention paid to two axes of social factors. First, does song learning occur via direct interaction of the young bird with song tutors, or via social eavesdropping by the young bird on interacting singers (social modeling of song)? Social modeling, a hypothesis first proposed by Pepperberg (Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 55(2), 139-160, 1981), and direct interaction are not mutually exclusive hypotheses, and the evidence we review suggests both play a role in song learning. Second, does song learning occur via interactions with rivals (territorial competitors) or with friends (mutually tolerant or even cooperative territorial neighbors). These are largely mutually exclusive hypotheses, and can really only be tested in the field. There is little evidence on this contrast to date. We review our recent study on song sparrows, which indicates that both the young bird and his primary tutor may benefit from song learning/tutoring. If this mutual benefit result is confirmed by further studies, we believe that song “tutoring” in these cases may be more than a term of convenience: that it may qualify as true teaching.

实验室研究表明，社会因素是鸟类歌曲学习的关键。然而，对于鸟类如何或为什么从自然条件下会听到的许多鸟类中选择他们所学的歌曲知之甚少。我们关注迄今为止提供的有关社​​交歌曲学习的各种理论，并特别关注社交因素的两个轴。首先，学习歌曲是通过幼鸟与歌曲导师的直接互动，还是通过幼鸟对互动歌手的社交窃听（歌曲的社交模型）进行的？社会模型，这是Pepperberg最初提出的假设（ZeitschriftfürTierpsychologie，55（2），139-160，1981）和直接相互作用不是互斥的假设，我们回顾的证据表明两者都在歌曲学习中起作用。其次，歌曲学习是否通过与竞争对手（领土竞争对手）或与朋友（相互宽容甚至合作的领土邻居）的互动而发生。这些在很大程度上是互斥的假设，实际上只能在现场进行检验。迄今没有证据表明这种对比。我们回顾了我们最近对歌曲麻雀的研究，该研究表明，幼鸟及其主要家庭教师都可以从歌曲学习/辅导中受益。如果通过进一步的研究证实了这种互惠互利的结果，我们认为在这种情况下歌曲“辅导”可能不仅仅是方便的用语：它可能符合真正的教学条件。