Current theories of physical child abuse are concerned with the family as an interaction system in which children are both targets and potential elicitors of parental violence. To understand the long-term causes and immediate triggers of physical abuse, researchers now turn to two-way interactive forces operating between all family members as well as between the family and the larger society (e.g., Belsky, 1980; Burgess, 1979; Parke and Collmer, 1975). In the same way, concern for the effects of child maltreatment have shifted to consider long-term transactional systems (Aber and Cicchetti, 1984, Cicchetti and Rizley, 1981). In this chapter, we will describe a transactional model of physical abuse that adds to existing models by including cognitions as moderators of affect. Although developmental theorists have consistently attended to the effects of events on children as mediated by their cognitive capacities, less attention has been directed to the mediating role of caregiver cognitions (Goodnow, 1985). If we are to understand the effect of children on adults (as well as the effects of adults on children), it is essential that we concern ourselves with the varying causal constructions that adults make about the caregiving relationship. In this chapter, we are concerned with the role of both adult and child cognitions in the caregiving interaction process. Additionally, attention will be focused on nonverbal communications of affect as mediators of malfunctioning family systems. Clinical observations of abusive family systems have been implicitly concerned with the role of cognitions and affect. What is needed, however, is greater systematic assessment of these processes.