Many investigators have reported that people with mental retardation have problems on emotion-recognition tasks. The evidence for the specificity of these performance deficits is reviewed, detailed consideration of the information-processing demands of different types of emotion-recognition tasks provided, and the conclusion made that evidence from identification tasks does not support the specificity hypothesis. It is suggested that deficits on other types of tasks may be due to IQ-related deficits in memory and attention, in imagination, and in dealing with static or ambiguous stimuli. The importance of MA-matching, using control tasks, and considering the complexity, abstraction, and ecological validity of stimuli is stressed. Recommendations are made for future research, and alternative theoretical positions are presented.