move tool not working like it used to

am i going insane? usually when i had a layer with a layer style on, like an overlay with a white background and black spots set to multiply, and i used the move tool with the auto-select funcion, it would ignore the white pixels that werent visible. this made navigating through the file so much easier!!! why did it change?? how do i change it back. this is literally driving me crazy

SCREENSHOTS of the problem (the blue square is the limitation of the layer it will select if i click):