Fifty adults with mental retardation completed the Cognitive Assessment System and the Facial Discrimination Task. Performances on the Facial Discrimination Task Emotion and Age Tasks were significantly correlated to the Cognitive Assessment System total score. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that processing of emotional stimuli was related to simultaneous and successive processing; whereas attention and planning failed to add significantly. The Emotion and Age Tasks yielded similar results, suggesting that cognitive processes are involved in processing facial stimuli in a similar way regardless of the type of facial cues involved. The results are discussed vis-à-vis modular models of emotion, future research directions, and the Age Task as a control task.