As a neurodevelopmental disorder schizophrenia impacts most aspects of cognitive functioning. Patients have particular difficulty on measures of attention, problem solving, and learning and memory against a background of less severe and more diffuse generalized cognitive dysfunction. The presentation will begin by viewing these cognitive findings to illustrate the importance of verbal learning and memory. More specific neuropsychological research will then be presented describing the affected components of memory function in schizophrenia with an emphasis on encoding and semantic organizational difficulties. This will be followed by a presentation of functional imaging (PET and fMRI) research on memory and semantic processing in schizophrenia. Presentation and discussion of a newly developed semantic working memory task will close the presentation.