This includes amount of study time and study strategies. Looking at their past study strategies can help them come up with strategies to improve performance. These are some of the ideas important to successful to hugging and bridging practices. There are many benefits of transfer of learning in the classroom. One of the main benefits is the ability to quickly learn a new task. This has many real-life applications such as language and speech processing. Transfer of learning is also very useful in teaching students to use higher cognitive thinking by applying their background knowledge to new situations. Cognitive theories grew out of Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology was developed in Germany in the early 1900s by Wolfgang Kohler and was brought to America in the 1920s. The German word "Gestalt" is roughly equivalent to the English "configuration" or "organization" and emphasizes the whole of human experience. Over the years, the Gestalt psychologists provided demonstrations and described principles to explain the way we organize our sensations into perceptions. Max Wertheimer, one of the founding fathers of Gestalt Theory, observed that sometimes we interpret motion when there is no motion at all. For example: a powered sign used at a convenience store to indicate that the store is open or closed might be seen as a sign with "constant light". However, the lights are actually flashing. Each light has been programmed to blink rapidly at their own individual pace. Perceived as a whole however, the sign appears fully lit without flashes. If perceived individually, the lights turn off and on at designated times. Another example of this would be a brick house: As a whole, it is viewed as a standing structure. However, it is actually composed of many smaller parts, which are individual bricks. People tend to see things from a holistic point of view rather than breaking it down into sub units. In Gestalt theory, psychologists say that instead of obtaining knowledge from what's in front of us, we often learn by making sense of the relationship between what's new and old. Because we have a unique perspective of the world, humans have the ability to generate their own learning experiences and interpret information that may or may not be the same for someone else. Gestalt psychologists criticize behaviorists for being too dependent on overt behavior to explain learning. They propose looking at the patterns rather than isolated events. Gestalt views of learning have been incorporated into what have come to be labeled "cognitive theories". Two key assumptions underlie this cognitive approach: that the memory system is an active organized processor of information and that prior knowledge plays an important role in learning.