Persons (5 males and 21 females) with the neurological diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, and an equal number of control subjects [Ss] matched on age, sex and education were given a battery of tests designed to assess motor and intellectual functioning. Ss in the multiple sclerosis group displayed marked deficits on all tests of motor skill except grip strength. Although verbal intelligence was not impaired in Ss with multiple sclerosis, these Ss performed more poorly than control Ss on 2 different tests of memory even though these tasks required minimal motor responsivity. Correlational analyses on the several motor and cognitive tasks revealed that correlations between motor and memory performance were consistently higher in persons with multiple sclerosis than in controls. Whereas multiple sclerosis may not have much effect on the utilization of stored verbal information, the processing and storage of new verbal material are disrupted by the disease to a degree that is paralleled by the extent of motor impairment. The memory impairments observed are apparently secondary to the primary motor deficit, but the alternative explanation that memory functions, like motor functions, are especially vulnerable to the demyelination process of multiple sclerosis is equally viable at present.