Your examples makes excellent sense along the lines of

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LocalityOfReferenceDocumentation

The principle may be stated formally as if it were a Newtonian Law of sorts:

The likelihood of keeping all or part of a software artifact consistent with any corresponding text that describes it, is inversely proportional to the square of the cognitive distance between them.

A less verbose, less pompous description would be simply: Out of sight; out of mind!

Therefore, it is desirable for us to try and minimize the cognitive distance between artifacts and their descriptions!

/J