I am a cognitive scientist interested in how the mind works.

I research how the mind represents and learns things that are often thought to be uniquely human: language, mathematics, and metacognition. Most of my work focuses on young children's early intuitions about the world, and how they either accelerate or slow down the learning of higher-order abilities.

I am the PI of the Centre for Cognitive Development. If you are interested in joining our lab as a Research Assistant, please email the lab directly. If you are interested in joining the lab as a Graduate Student or Post-Doc, please email me directly (I am not taking any new graduate students in the 2023/2024 admissions cycle). In an effort to be more transparent about my student supervision style and the expectations I hold of graduate students in my lab, I maintain the Graduate Student Expectations Document.

As of 2024, my research is financially supported by NSERC, SSHRC, and the Jacobs Foundation.

Curriculum vitae

(Last Update: Jan/30/2024)

Employment

University of British Columbia
Associate Professor		 2020 - Present
University of British Columbia
Assistant Professor		 2014 - 2020

Education

Johns Hopkins University
Ph.D. Psychological and Brain Sciences
Advisor: Justin Halberda
Thesis: "Objects and Substances in Vision, Language, and Development"		 2010 - 2014
Johns Hopkins University
M.A. Psychological and Brain Sciences
Advisor: Justin Halberda		 2009 - 2010
University of Toronto
Hon B.Sc. Psychology (with High Distinction)
Advisors: Jay Pratt and Lynn Hasher
Thesis: "The Effects of Aging on the Attentional Blink"		 2004 - 2008

Grants

NSERC Discovery Grant (PI)
"The role of long-term experience in the development and use of the visual
number sense" $200,000		 2021 - 2026
Jacobs Foundation (PI)
"Research Fellowship Program", $150,000 CHF		 2021 - 2023
SSHRC Insight Grant (PI)
"The role of intuitive number error monitoring in learning mathematics", $94,620		 2018 - 2023
NSERC Discovery Grant (PI)
"The psychophysics of number, time, and space", $120,000		 2016 - 2021
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (PI)
"Measuring individual and developmental differences in confidence", $64,073		 2015 - 2017
Canadian Fund for Innovation Leaders Opportunity Fund (PI)
"Building the Centre for Cognitive Development", $117,648		 2015 - 2016
University of British Columbia Hampton Research Fund (PI)
"The Psychology and Psychophysics of Confidence", $10,000		 2014 - 2015

Contact Info

  • Address

    2136 West Mall (Kenny Building)
    University of British Columbia
    Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
    Canada

Publications

Whenever possible, I make PDFs and OSF links with pre-registrations, methods, and data available. External links will take you directly to a publisher's website. Citation statistics are available through my Google Scholar profile.

Published or Accepted

Odic, D., Knowlton, T., Wellwood, A., Pietroski, P., Lidz, J., & Halberda, J. (in press) Observers Efficiently Extract the Minimal and Maximal Element in Perceptual Magnitude Sets: Evidence for a Bipartite Format Psychological Science.
Bonn, C., & Odic, D. (in press) Effects of spatial frequency cross-adaptation on the visual number senseAttention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
Dramkin, D., & Odic, D. (in press) Children dynamically update and extend the interface between number words and perceptual magnitudes Developmental Science.
Liu, Y., Odic, D., Tang, X., Ma, A., Larichava, M., Chen, G., Wu, S., Niu, M., Guo, Y., & Milner-Bolotin M. (2023) Effects of Robotics Education on Young Children’s Cognitive Development: a Pilot Study with Eye-Tracking. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 32(3).
Odic, D. & Oppenheimer, D. (2023) Visual number perception is impaired for real-world scenes. Cognition, 230.
Dramkin, D., Bonn, C., Baer, C., & Odic, D. (2022) The malleable impact of non-numeric features in visual number perception. Acta Psychologica, 230.
Baer, C., & Odic, D. (2022) Mini-Managers: Children strategically divide cognitive labor among collaborators, but with a self-serving bias. Child Development, 93(2), 437-450.
Sella, F., Slusser, E., Odic, D. & Krajcsi, A. (2021) The emergence of children’s natural number concepts: current theoretical challenges. Child Development Perspectives, 15(4), 265-273.
Knowlton, T., Hunter, T., Odic, D., Wellwood, A., Halberda, J., Pietroski, P., & Lidz, J. (2021) Pieces of word meaning: How language impacts vision and action. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences., 1500(1), 134-144.
Bear, C., Malik, P., & Odic, D. (2021) Are Children’s Judgments of Another’s Accuracy Linked to Their Metacognitive Confidence Judgments? Metacognition and Learning, 16, 485-516.
Libertus. M., Odic, D., Feigenson, L., & Halberda, J. (2020) Visual training of approximate number sense improves auditory number sense and schoolmath ability. Frontiers in Psychology..
Wong, H., & Odic, D. (2021) The intuitive number sense predicts formal symbolic equation error monitoring abilities. JEP:LMC, 47(1), 1-10.
Baer, C., & Odic, D. (2020) Children flexibly compare their perceptual certainty across and within domains. Developmental Psychology., 56(11), 2095-2101.
Baer, C., & Odic, D. (2020) The relationship between children’s approximate number confidence and formal math abilities. Numerical Cognition, 6(1), 50-65.
Odic, D., & Wojcik, E. (2020) The publication gender gap in psychology. The American Psychologist, 75, 92-103.
Baer, C., & Odic, D. (2019) Certainty in numerical judgments develops independently of the Approximate Number System. Cognitive Development, 52, 100817.
Picon, E., Dramkin, D., & Odic, D. (2019) Visual illusions reveal the primitives of number perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1675-1687.
Baer, C., Gill, I., & Odic, D. (2018) A domain-general sense of confidence in young children. Open Mind, 1(4), 208 - 218.
Odic, D. & Starr, A. (2018) An Introduction to the Approximate Number System. Child Development Perspectives, 12, 208 - 218.
Odic, D., Pietroski, P., Hunter, T., Lidz, J., & Halberda, J. (2018) Individuals and Non-Individuals in Cognition and Semantics Glossa, 3, 61.
Odic, D. (2018) Children's intuitive sense of number develops independently of their perception of area, density, length and time. Developmental Science, 21, e12533.
Odic, D. (2017) The contributions of non-numeric dimensions to number encoding, representations, and decision-making factors. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, 34-35.
Wang, J., Odic, D., Halberda, J., & Feigenson, L. (2017) Better together: Multiple lines of evidence for a link between approximate and exact number representations. A reply to Merkley, Matejko & Ansari. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 153, 168-172.
Hunter, T., Lidz, J., Odic, D., & Wellwood, A. (2017) On how verification tasks are related to verification procedures: A reply to Kotek et al.Natural Language Semantics,25(2), 91-107.
Libertus, M., Odic, D., Feigenson, L., & Halberda, J. (2016) The Precision of Mapping Between Number Words and the Approximate Number System Predicts Children's Formal Math Abilities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,150, 207-226.
Odic, D., Im, H.Y., Eisinger, R., Ly, R., & Halberda, J. (2016) PsiMLE: A maximum-likelihood approach to estimating psychophysical scaling and variability more reliably, efficiently, and flexibly. Behavior Research Methods,48(2), 445-462.
Wang, J., Odic, D., Halberda, J., & Feigenson, L. (2016) Changing preschoolers' approximate number system changes their symbolic math performance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 147, 82-89.
Shusterman, A., Slusser, E., Halberda, J., & Odic, D. (2016) Acquisition of the Cardinal Principle Coincides with Improvement in Approximate Number System Acuity in Preschoolers. PLoS ONE, 11(4).
Odic, D., Valle Lisboa, J., Eisinger, R., Gonzalez Olivera, M., Maiche, A., & Halberda, J. (2016) Approximate number and approximate time each correlate with school math abilities in children. Acta Psychologica,163, 17-26.
Odic, D., & Halberda, J. (2015) Eye movements reveal distinct encoding patterns of number and cumulative surface area in random dot arrays. Journal of Vision,15, 15-15.
Libertus, M., Odic, D., Feigenson, L., & Halberda, J. (2015) A developmental vocabulary assessment for parents (DVAP): validating parental report of vocabulary size in 2-7 year old children. Journal of Cognition and Development. 16(3), 442-454.
Odic, D., Le Corre, M., & Halberda, J. (2015) Children's mappings between number words and the approximate number system. Cognition. 138, 102 - 121
Halberda, J., & Odic, D. (2014) The precision and internal confidence of our approximate number thoughts. Evolutionary Origins and Early Development of Basic Number Processing., 305 - 333<
Odic, D., Hock, H., & Halberda, J. (2014) Hysteresis affects number discrimination in young children. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 143(1), 255-265.
Odic, D., Libertus, M., Feigenson, L., & Halberda, J. (2013) Developmental change in the acuity of approximating area and approximating number. Developmental Psychology, 49, 1103-1112
Odic, D., Pietroski, P., Hunter, T., Lidz, J., & Halberda, J. (2013) Children's understanding of 'more' and discrimination of number and surface area. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39(2), 451-461.
Libertus, M., Odic, D., & Halberda, J. (2012) Intuitive sense of number correlates with scores on college-entrance examination. Acta Psychologica, 141, 373-379.
Odic, D., Roth, O., & Flombaum, J. (2012) The relationship between apparent motion and object files. Visual Cognition, 20 (9), 1082-1094.
Pietroski, P., Lidz, J., Hunter, T., Odic, D., & Halberda, J. (2011) Seeing what you mean, mostly. Syntax & Semantics, 37, 181-218.
Odic, D., & Pratt, J. (2010) Differential activation theory can account for the Ternus Display: Rejoinder to Petersik. Perception, 39 (5), 711-717.
Odic, D., & Pratt, J. (2008) Solving the correspondence problem within the Ternus display: The differential-activation theory. Perception, 37(12), 1790 - 1804