It's also an innate (or at least universally acquired) mental heuristic. IIRC, there are experiments showing that if, say, a baseball player can't readily make

It's also an innate (or at least universally acquired) mental heuristic. IIRC, there are experiments showing that if, say, a baseball player can't readily make use of a fixed background by which to gauge and maintain a constant bearing viz-a-viz the object to be caught when positioning themself, their success rate plummets. Searching for "Outfielder Problem" should bring up some interesting literature.