To evaluate the possible differences in memory dysfunction we analysed the episodic and semantic memory of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) with dementia, and age-matched normal controls (NC). The memory was examined with story recall tests, list learning test with Buschke selective reminding method and category naming test. Both AD and PD groups committed more prior-story intrusion errors as compared with the NC subjects, but only the AD patients committed more extra-story intrusion errors. Both patient groups committed more extra-list intrusion errors than the NC group. Furthermore, the AD patients made more extra-list intrusion errors and recognized more false positive targets than the PD patients did. The results suggest that AD and PD patients have different patterns of memory dysfunction. The AD patients seem to perform poorly because of their inability to inhibit irrelevant information and because of increased sensitivity to interference, whereas the deficits of PD patients only reflect sensitivity to proactive interference.