Researchers showed 24 babies aged six to nine months a video of a puppet show.
The 14 boys and ten girls sat on a parent's lap wearing a net on their heads with sensors attached to scan brain activity.
The babies were first shown two puppets, which were then obscured by a screen. A hand was shown removing one of the puppets. The screen was then removed to reveal one puppet, as would be expected, that is 2-1 = 1.
However, in some cases the babies were shown an 'incorrect' answer with the presence of two puppets (2-1=2).
Babies spent slightly longer looking at the puppets when they were shown the wrong answer - just over eight seconds with two puppets and just under seven seconds with one.
Dr Andrea Berger of Ben Gurion University of Nagev led the team of American and Israeli scientists. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Berger said, 'These findings show that the brain network involved in error detection can be identified in infancy.'