New research has flipped the way experts believe autistic people see and understand.

It's generally been accepted that sufferers of Autism Spectrum Disorder generally see visual motion poorly, and can't process the information they receive properly.

Now it's thought that perhaps they see too much - leading them to having sensory overload as they can't discard irrelevant information.

Auckland University scientist Professor Steven Dakin says the research shows that people with autism have enhanced movement integration that can make them better or worse at seeing motion, depending on what they're asked to do.

He's contributed to a just published research paper in the Journal of Neuroscience that outlines the findings, undertaken together with autism researchers from University College, London.

The new research separates the two functions of processing fine detail, and overall context.

Professor Dakin, who leads the School of Optometry and Visual Science at the University, says our understanding of visual processing in autism has been obscured by the use of tests that don’t really tell us what limits people’s visual performance.

He says children with autism don't have a global processing problem at all.

"If anything, they are better at global processing."

“The assumption was that if you are bad at tasks that require pooling information it is because you can’t pool it. Now we think that what’s happening is that people with autism can’t ignore irrelevant information and that’s quite a different thing.

“That’s about your ability to resist noise, and so we think it’s related to sensory overload. Their sensory overload is an inability to resist the irrelevant,” says Professor Dakin.

“If anything, you could almost think of that as more integration – the exact opposite of what people have thought. Our work shows that integration is fine in people with autism, they just can’t ignore noise.”