This dissertation examines interactions between social motivations and affective-cognitive functioning following social threat using an integrative approach that explores emotional, behavioral, and physiological mechanisms across development. The ability to perceive and respond adaptively to threats in the environment is essential to human survival. We have evolved a set of complex, interconnected systems to respond with a high degree of specificity to threats in our environment. Critically, as a socially interdependent species, humans must attend to the social environment to detect potential social threats. The maintenance of social connections is essential to our sense of satisfaction and well-being, and the perception of deficits in quality connections in a social network represents a threat to survival. Coordinating adaptive responses to anticipated or real future social threats also requires affective-cognitive processes directed at the formation and maintenance of memory for past experiences. Integration of prior experiences of threat throughout life contributes to future perceptions of the social environment, and adverse experiences in early life have particularly far-reaching implications for affective and cognitive development. Therefore, an increased understanding of the context-dependent, multi-level response patterns generated in the face of social threat will provide advances in knowledge of how individuals are differentially impacted by similar adverse or potentially traumatic social experiences. In this dissertation I ask 1) How does the predictability of social stressors influence self-regulatory behaviors in children exposed to early life stress?, 2) How does prior exposure to social stress shape perceived social isolation and emotion regulation in violence-exposed adolescents?, and 3) How does acute social stress impact autobiographical memory and episodic future thinking? To investigate these questions, I use observational and experimental measurements of physiological, emotional, and behavioral factors presented within a developmental framework.