Social Psychology of Education 4: 359–372, 2001. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 359 The social regulation of classroom performances: a theoretical outline JEAN MARC MONTEIL and PASCAL HUGUET ⋆ Rectorat de l’Académie de Marseille-Aix-en-Provence & Université Blaise Pascal, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France Abstract. Based on 20 years of research on the social regulation of academic performances, this paper provides arguments for the idea that the social context in which cognitive functioning takes place is an integral part of that functioning, not just the surrounding context for it. Several studies in the classroom setting indeed reveal that student’s cognitive performances can depend on interac- tions between their actual and past social experiences, most notably interpersonal comparison and evaluation episodes. Because of their recurrence, these episodes can become part of student’s autobi- ographical memory and, therefore, can affect their actual behavior in specific conditions. Theoretical suggestions are made for a ‘social psychology of cognition.’ 1. Introduction If we agree that one of social psychology’s specific aims is to understand the functioning of human beings as both participants in and partakers of the social world, we should easily subscribe to the following statement: studying the indi- vidual from a psycho-social point of view entails first considering this individual in his or her social context and then striving to construct explanatory systems which take this context into account. In this paper, more theoretical than empirical, our goal is to provide arguments for including the individuals’ autobiographical dimension in these explanatory systems. Based on 20 years of research on the social regulation of classroom performances (see Monteil & Huguet, 1999, for a review), these arguments suggest that students’ cognitive performances are fre- quently the result of an interaction between past and present self-related academic experiences. 1.1. PRELIMINARY NOTES At the time of encoding and storage of much information, social and emotional experiences are closely linked to the individuals’ corporal environment. There is good reason to believe that this idea is by no means absurd. Referring to Tulving’s ⋆ Author for correspondence: Universit´ e Blaise Pascal, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale de la Cognition, 34 Avenue Carnot, 63006 Clermont-Ferrand, France; E-mail: huguet@srvpsy.univ_bpclermont.fr