I present D cognitive model of the humon ability lo acquire c.us.I relotionshipr. I report on experimental evidence demonrtroting that human leornerr acquire occwote cwxd relationships more rapidly when training examples oreconrirtent with o general theory of cwsolity. This article describes o learning procerr that uses o general theory of causality OS background knowledge. The leorning pro-cess, which I cdl theory-driven learning (TDL), hypothesizes cw~a1 relationships consistent both with observed doto and the general theory of courolity. TDL accounts for data on both the rote a+ which humon learners acquire couscll relo-tionrhips, and the types of COUSJ relationships they acquire. Experiments with TDL demonrtrote the odvontoge of TDL for acquiring cowa relationships over similarity-bored opproacher to learning: Fewer examples ore required to loom an acc~rote relotionrhio. 1.