• Children acquire new knowledge th

• Children acquire new knowledge through both unintentional and intentional learning processes Many contemporary psychologists agree that children learn some things with little or no conscious awareness or effort. For example, consider this question about household pets. “ On average, which are larger, cats or dogs?” Even if you’ve never intentionally thought about this issue, you can easily answer “dogs” because of the many characteristics (including size) you’ve learned to associate with both species. Children unconsciously learn that many aspects of their world are characterized by consistent patterns and associations (see the discussion of concept learning in Chapter 10).