The observed increase in reading performance following working memory training and its concomitant ERN enhancement has implications for improving the design of interventions with dyslexics. At the same time, it is obvious that the causal links between working memory, ERN and performance are complex. In an effort to better understand this process, we partialled out working memory from the formula and calculated the correlation between accuracy on the Sternberg task and ERN amplitude. The correlation at T1 was found to be r = 34 (P<05), essentially the same as that found between them without partialling out working memory (r = .33). This suggests that the contributions of working memory and the error detection system to performance are partially independent of each other. To further complicate matters, it is conceivable that working memory enhances the effectiveness of the error detection system, but once in place it operates at least to some extent independently of it.
