The Prerequisites to Learning a Skill: Cognitive Skill Acquisition

At a basic level, we can contrast two ways of learning. One way is to memorize, by rote, the answer to every possible question in a domain. The other way is to learn a process for generating solutions in the domain.

Children seem to do exactly this when learning arithmetic. They begin with a procedure, like counting. As they gain experience, they memorize more and more of the exact answers. Eventually, they are able to solve most arithmetic problems through recall alone, and the procedure of counting fades away.