Information for a lay audience

We never see the world exactly as it is. The information we receive through our senses is always combined with what we expect, which means that our expectations are constantly biasing our perception. I'm researching how our perception is influenced by our expectations when something unexpected happens, because these are often good opportunities for us to learn something new. I'm also researching how this process might be different in autistic people, because there is an exciting new theory that autistic people may perceive the world slightly differently than non-autistic people.