A mind’s cognitive development involves a continual process of automatization.
For example, you cannot perceive a table as an infant perceives it—as a
mysterious object with four legs. You perceive it as a table, i.e., a man-made
piece of furniture, serving a certain purpose belonging to a human habitation,
etc.; you cannot separate these attributes from your sight of the table, you
experience it as a single, indivisible percept—yet all you see is a
four-legged object; the rest is an automatized integration of a vast amount of
conceptual knowledge which, at one time, you had to learn bit by bit. The same
is true of everything you perceive or experience; as an adult, you cannot
perceive or experience in a vacuum, you do it in a certain automatized
context—and the efficiency of your mental operations depends on the kind of
context your subconscious has automatized.