Thorndike’s Law of Belongingness states that reward or punishment to be maximally effective must be relevant to the situation. Mere contiguity between the stimulus and the response would not ensure the effectiveness of the reward. While reading a paragraph, the last word of a sentence, and the first-word of the next sentence share physical proximity, but their association would be poor. For example, consider the following two sentences: ‘Ramesh spoke loudly’, ‘Suneet went home’. The association strength of the pair, ‘Suneet- went’ is more than that of the pair ‘loudly-Suneet’, though both pairs have same degree of physical proximity. Hence the first pair would be better remembered than the second pair, according to the Law of Belongingness.