This investigation focused upon whether individuals with lateralized temporal-lobe epilepsy have impairments in short term memory and, if so, whether these impairments are of a material-specific nature. The Peterson short term memory distractor paradigm which consists of single, brief presentations of stimuli with varying decay intervals and appropriate interpolated distractors was employed. A significant deficit in both left and right temporal lobe seizure groups was documented in comparison to controls for verbal but not for non-verbal materials. The results suggest that one aspect of the memory problem observed in temporal lobe seizure patients relates to relatively early components of information processing where encoding is primarily based upon physical rather than semantic characteristics of the stimulus and material-specificity is less evident.