New insights into the role of motion and form vision in neurodevelopmental disorders

•A deficit perceiving global motion but not form arises in several clinical groups.•Theories explaining this impairment are seriously challenged by recent research.•New types of tasks have revealed the nature of the visual deficit in dyslexia.•Sex and non-verbal IQ are strongly associated with performance on motion tasks.•A new theory of visual processing in neurodevelopmental disorders is needed.