Reddit mentions of Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Different Sensory Experiences - Different Perceptual Worlds

Autistic adult here. I would recommend reading the writing of Autistic adults. Blogs are good place to start - you can digest information fast without committing to reading a whole biography in book form. Some Autistic adults have even written about their experiences with ABA when they were children. Some have written about what it was like before they could communicate, how frustrating it was, and the behaviors they had. I'm sorry I don't have a list full of links for you, but just google around. Here is one link entitled Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from my Behavioral Therapist :http://www.autistics.org/library/behavioral.html Think of it as "what not to do".

The very best books on autism I have read are by Olga Bogdashina. The most useful ones for you will likely be the ones on Sensory issues:
http://www.amazon.com/Sensory-Perceptual-Issues-Asperger-Syndrome/dp/1843101661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302381357&sr=8-1

and Communication: http://www.amazon.com/Communication-Issues-Autism-Asperger-Syndrome/dp/1843102676/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302381357&sr=8-2

I cannot recommend these highly enough!

What makes these books so good is that the author combines current scientific research, explained clearly, with many first-hand accounts of Autistic people about their experiences. If you're going to work with Autistic kids, you have got to understand that their sensory perception, thinking, and ideas about communication are totally different from your own. Not better or worse, but different. A noise that to you is imperceptible or neutral might be painful to the child. Eye contact may be painful. You have to figure out what the child's sensory triggers are, and avoid them, because no one learns very well when they're in pain or distracted by overwhelming stimuli. Also, respect the child's harmless stims. These are a coping mechanism for dealing with a crazy world. Hand flapping, rocking, etc doesn't hurt anyone - it is a way for the child to calm themselves and deal with things. It is often said that the goal of some ABA therapy is "to make the child indistinguishable from his peers". Please don't let that be the goal. The goal of anything should be to improve the child's quality of life, not to make him look like all the other kids. The Autistic child will grow into the Autistic adult, and he needs to learn how to function in the world as an Autistic adult, not as a person pretending to be neurotypical and failing.

One of the best books on sensory differences is this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sensory-Perceptual-Issues-Asperger-Syndrome/dp/1843101661

Another article that gives some insight is: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/feature-giving-blind-people-sight-illuminates-brain-s-secrets

The take away from these things is that everyone's senses takes the same raw input, it's how the brain organizes and interprets these things that is perception. This means that you can't change the raw input to simulate perception.

So these simulations are rather bogus as an accurate picture of the sensory differences. They just open up people to the idea that there may be differences.

Overload is a very real thing, but it's not experienced by everyone. Ogda's (and a fairly well accepted view) is that some of the most severely impacted autistic people have severe perception difficulties.

How can you talk and communicate with others if your brain can't differentiate speech patterns from other noise or pay any special significance to a face?

If this is a true reflection of what's going on, then in theory the higher up the spectrum the less sensory / perception differences you have. There may still be some, but they are going to be extremely subtle (reflecting the spectrum idea).