The past ECT group had worse performance than that of the non-ECT group on immediate and short- and long-delay free recall and cued recall measures on the CVLT. Patients had further difficulty with encoding and retrieving information, compared with the non-ECT group, implicating medial temporal lobe structures and, possibly, aspects of the prefrontal cortex. The CVLT in particular identifies encodingbased memory deficits where free recall, short- and longterm memory and cued recall depend on proper encoding of the list and retrieval. Further, this list-learning task involves a component of strategic organization and is sensitive to executive dysfunction; it is possible that elements of executive function were particularly affected by ECT.