law of contiguity
a principle of association stating that forming connections between ideas, events (e.g., stimuli and responses), or other items depends on their proximity in space or time. It has been supplemented by the principle of contingency; that is, the degree of association between events increases when the probability of one event occurring is increased by the occurrence of the other. The combination of contiguity and contingency is now viewed as essential to forming associations and is a keystone of most contemporary theories of learning, memory, and knowledge.