Contiguity

A contiguity is a continuous mass, or a series of things in contact or in proximity, or the state of

being such a mass or series.[1] The concept was first set out in the Law of Contiguity (one
of Aristotle's Laws of Association) which states that things that occur near each other
in time or space are readily associated.
Contents
[hide]

1 Biology

2 Computer science

3 Geography

4 Interaction design

5 Management

6 Mathematics

7 Philosophy

8 Physics

9 Probability theory

10 Psychology

11 See also

12 References

Biology[edit]
A cluster of genes which are close to one another at a chromosome locus are
called contiguous. Contiguous gene disorders result from deletions or duplications of a
chromosome segment that cause a contiguous gene imbalance. Also, Contiguity refers to the way
Taxonomy is ordered and formed after Charles Darwin wrote Theory of the Origins of Speciesin
1859. Before then, scientists used a more strict taxonomy based upon an organism's locomotion

and mobility. Now science bases taxonomy on contiguity, tracking changes in an organism's
anatomy over eons to show contiguous shaping over time.
Computer science[edit]
Memory elements are contiguous if adjacent and apparently connected (but they may, in fact, be
disconnected). Acomputer file or other data stored on a mass storage system, particularly hard
disk-based, is said to be contiguoussometimes, ungrammatically, to be composed of one
fragmentif the file data is in one continuous region without intervening extraneous data. A
non-contiguous file is said to be fragmented, and can usually be defragmented with a software
utility.
Geography[edit]
Political or geographical land divisions that, as a group, are not interrupted by other land or water
is contiguous. In theUnited States, for example, the "48 contiguous states"
excludes Hawaii and Alaska, which do not share borders with otherU.S. states.[2]
Other examples of geographical contiguity might include the "contiguous European Union"
excluding member states such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and Cyprus
(these being non-contiguous), or the "contiguous United Kingdom" referring to all parts of the
country excepting Northern Ireland (it being geographically non-contiguous).
Two or more contiguous municipalities can be consolidated into one, or one municipality can
consist of many noncontiguous elements. For example, the Financially Distressed Municipalities
Act allows the commonwealth ofPennsylvania to merge contiguous municipalities to
reduce financial distress.
Geographic contiguity is important in biology, especially animal ranges. For a particular species,
its habitat may be a 'contiguous range', or it might be broken, requiring periodic, typically
seasonal migrations; (see: Disjunct distribution). The same concept of contiguous range is true
for human transportation studies in an attempt to understand census geography.[3] It also comes
into play with electoral geography and politics.[4]
Interaction design[edit]
Contiguous data is recognized by the fact that it must be in a particular order to keep its meaning.
If you scramble ltetres or words in a txet, meniang is lsot.[5]
Management[edit]
The concept of close operational context is an approach to determine the co-operation of entities,
e.g. persons or persons with equipment, to monitor the usage of equipment just by a fuzzy
metrics for lateral distance, as in the events of coooperation or, in healthcare, especially the event
of provision of service by staff to patients.[6]

Mathematics[edit]
The ideas of closeness are inherent in the concept of a contiguity space or proximity space. See
also Law of Continuity. In addition, the Law of Continuity can be applied to conceptual
computational abstract ideas.
Philosophy[edit]
Philosophers speak of contiguity when they assume two events or objects lying directly side by
side in space and time without being connected by causality or any other principle.[7]
Physics[edit]
Contiguity is a metallurgical property used to characterize microstructure of materials. It is
computed by finding the ratio of solidsolid length to the sum of solidsolid and solidliquid
length of the microstructure.
Probability theory[edit]
The contiguity of a pair of sequences of probability measures is a property that relates to the
commonality of the sets that have zero measure as the index in the sequence increases.
See Contiguity (probability theory).
Psychology[edit]
Association by contiguity is the principle that ideas, memories, and experiences are linked when
one is frequently experienced with the other. For example, if you constantly see a knife and a
fork together they become linked (associated). The more these two items (stimuli) are perceived
together the stronger the link between them. When one of the memories becomes activated later
on, the linked (contiguously associated) memory becomes temporarily more activated and thus
easier to be called into working memory. This process is called priming, and the initial memory
that primed the other is called the retrieval cue.
Association by contiguity is the root of association by similarity. Association by similarity is the
idea that one memory primes another through their common property or properties. Thus, an
apple may prime a memory of a rose through the common property of red. These two become
associated even though you may have never experienced an apple and a rose together (consistent
with association by contiguity).
In the study of human memory, the contiguity effect has been found in studies of free recall.
Analyses of free recall data indicates that there tends to be the greatest number of +/- 1
transitions between words, suggesting that a person is more likely to recall words together that
are closer together in a list.[8] This is shown in a graph of conditional response probability as a
function of lag as originated by Dr. Michael Kahana. The probability of recall (y-axis) is plotted
against the lag, or separation between subsequently recalled words.[9] For example, if two items A

and B are learned together, when cued with B, A is retrieved and vice versa due to their temporal
contiguity, although there will be a stronger forward association (when cued with A, B is
recalled).[9]
The contiguity effect appears relatively constant, and has been predicted to have long-term
effects according to the temporal context model proposed by Howard and Kahana.[10] This model
explains the contiguity effect in the following manner: when an item is presented, it activates the
temporal context that was active when the item was originally studied. Since contexts of
neighboring items overlap, and that overlap increases with decreasing lag between items, a
contiguity effect results.[8] The contiguity effect has even been found between items in different
lists, although it has been speculated that these items could simply be intrusions.[11]
When one associated memory, a group of associated memories, or a whole line of associated
memories becomes primed, this is known as spreading activation.
In conditioning, contiguity refers to how associated a reinforcer is with behaviour. The higher the
contiguity between events the greater the strength of the behavioural relationship.
Edwin Ray Guthrie's contiguity theory deals with patterned movements.[12]
See also[edit]

Cohesion

Connectedness

Neighbourhood

Proximity

Vicinity

References[edit]
1. Jump up^ Dictionary.com
2. Jump up^ Wetlands Metadata for the Lower 48 States, US Fish and Wildlife
Service
3. Jump up^ Census Metropolitan Area, Statistics Canada
4. Jump up^ The Electoral Geography of Weimar Germany: Exploratory Spatial
Data Analyses of Protestant Support for the Nazi Party, by John O'Loughlin
5. Jump up^ About Face 3: The essentials of Interaction Design, by Alan Cooper,
Robert Reimann and Dave Cronin, page 293

6. Jump up^ Patent application: Verfahren zum Steuern der Freigabe einer
Einrichtung oder eines Dienstes
7. Jump up^ Prechtl, Burkhard: Metzler Philosophie Lexikon, Poeschel Verlag, 1999,
p. 300. The concept of contiguity is important in Whiteheadian process ontology:
see Michel Weber,Whiteheads Pancreativism. The Basics. Foreword by Nicholas
Rescher, Frankfurt / Paris, Ontos Verlag, 2006.
8. ^ Jump up to:a b Sederberg, Howard & Kahana. "A context-based theory of
recency and contiguity in free recall" (PDF). Retrieved9 May 2011.
9. ^ Jump up to:a b Kahana, Michael; Howard; Zaromb; Wingfield (2001). "Age
dissociates recency and lag-recency effects in free recall". Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory Cognition. See also
figurehttp://memory.psych.upenn.edu/File:Crp2a_square.jpg
10. Jump up^ Howard; Kahana (2002). "A distributed representation of temporal
context". Journal of Mathematical Psychology 46: 269
299. doi:10.1006/jmps.2001.1388.
11. Jump up^ Howard; Youker; Venkatadass (2008). "The persistence of memory:
Contiguity effects across hundreds of seconds".Psychonomic Bulletin &
Review 1 (15): 5863.doi:10.3758/pbr.15.1.58.
12. Jump up^ Instructional Design Theories