Prosocial and health protective behaviors are critical to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, yet adolescents have been difficult to engage. Attachment security promotes adolescents' capacities to navigate stress, and influences prosocial and health behaviors. Drawing on a diverse sample of 202 adolescents (48% female; 47.5% Latinx) this study evaluated relations among attachment, mental health, and prosocial and health protective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Attachment security (age 12) predicted adolescents' (age 15) COVID-19 prosocial ( f 2 = .201) and health protective behaviors ( f 2 = .274) during the pandemic via smaller-thanexpected increases in mental health symptoms above pre-pandemic levels (age 14). Findings highlight the importance of attachment for supporting adolescents' mental health responses to life stressors and promoting prosocial and health protective behaviors. How to cite this article: Coulombe, B. R., & Yates, T. M. (2021). Attachment security predicts adolescents' prosocial and health protective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Child Development, 00, 1-14.

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Introduction Building on prior evidence that prosocial behavior is related to the regulation of personal distress in difficult situations, and given that physiological regulation is a central contributor to effective emotion regulation, this investigation evaluated whether and how children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during emotion challenges influenced later expressions of prosocial behavior. Methods The current study utilized a diverse sample of school‐aged children (N = 169; 47.9% female; 47.3% Latinx) to evaluate relations between children's parasympathetic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) and sympathetic (i.e., pre‐ejection period; PEP) reactivity in response to each of three film‐elicited emotion challenges (i.e., sadness, happiness, and fear) at age 7 and both observed and parent‐reported prosocial behavior one year later. Results Children's parasympathetic reactivity to a film eliciting sadness evidenced a nonlinear relation with later prosocial sharing such that children who evidenced either RSA withdrawal or augmentation in response to the sad emotion challenge engaged in higher levels of prosocial behavior than children who evidenced relatively low or absent reactivity. Parasympathetic reactivity to films eliciting happiness or fear was not significantly related to later prosocial behavior. Likewise, children's sympathetic reactivity in response to the emotion challenges did not significantly predict later prosocial behavior. Conclusions These findings provide preliminary support for a nonlinear association between children's parasympathetic emotion reactivity and later prosocial behavior, and suggest that children's ANS regulation in sad emotion contexts may be particularly important for understanding prosocial development.

This study assessed maternal caregiving quality and children's prosocial behavior as related to changes in child self‐esteem from early childhood across the transition into formal schooling. Although a robust literature indicates that sensitive caregiving promotes self‐esteem, less is known about the potential contribution of children's positive social behavior to enhanced self‐esteem. This study drew on a diverse sample of young children (N = 250; Mage = 4.085, SD = .249; 50% female, 50% male; 46% Latinx) to evaluate prospective relations between an observational assessment of sensitive maternal caregiving at the age of 4 and child reports of self‐esteem at the age of 8 as mediated by teacher‐reports of children's prosocial behavior at the age of 6. Analyses revealed a significant indirect pathway whereby sensitive maternal caregiving promoted children's self‐esteem via children's prosocial behavior. These findings highlight both sensitive caregiving and children's prosocial behavior as promising points of intervention to bolster children's self‐esteem.