The present study sought to design calculus tasks to determine students' preference for visual or analytic processing as well as examine the role of preferred mode of processing in calculus performance and its relationship to spatial ability and verbal-logical reasoning ability. Data were collected from 150 high school students who were enrolled in Advanced Placement calculus courses. The measures of preferred mode of processing did not correlate with the measures of spatial ability and verbal-logical reasoning ability, suggesting that cognitive abilities did not predict the students' preference for visual or analytic processing. Multiple regression analysis revealed that spatial visualization ability, verbal-logical reasoning ability, preference for visual processing contributed significantly to the variance in calculus performance. Correlations between calculus performance and the measures of preferred mode processing suggest that the nature and complexity of mathematical tasks might have influenced the students' degree of preference for using visual processing.