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Abstract
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are developmental disorders which are thought primarily
to affect social functioning. However, there is now a growing body of evidence that
unusual sensory processing is at least a concomitant and possibly the cause of many
of the behavioural signs and symptoms of ASD. A comprehensive and critical review
of the phenomenological, empirical, neuroscientific and theoretical literature pertaining
to visual processing in ASD is presented, along with a brief justification of a new
theory which may help to explain some of the data, and link it with other current
hypotheses about the genetic and neural aetiologies of this enigmatic condition.