Meaning of "this most basic of abilities"

Hi~ Can I understand the part in red as same as "this most basic ability"?

Or does it have different meaning?

Thank you~

To make sense of the world, the human brain puts things into groups,
and the retrieval of certain data often causes unintentional associations.
Without this most basic of abilities, we could not navigate the
world around us. Since this is such a natural process, research has concluded
that we all possess implicit bias.