Abstract: One hundred and forty participants were instructed to use absolute judgement or relative judgement just prior to facing a present perpetrator lineup or an absent perpetrator lineup. Participants’ eye movements were recorded during the lineup presentation to assess whether they were able to apply the instructions they had been given. The results showed no significant differences between the type of instruction and the identification accuracy in the lineups. However, eye-tracking data showed that participants who were given absolute judgement instructions made significantly fewer comparisons between photographs than those who received relative judgement instructions in both types of lineups. Additionally, in the present perpetrator lineup, participants spent less time looking at the set of photographs of the lineup in the absolute judgement condition than in the relative judgement condition. Moreover, participants’ meta-memory evaluations indicated a certain degree of correspondence between participants’ self-reports and their eye-tracking data. Finally, a weak relationship was observed between post-lineup confidence and accuracy in both lineups. Therefore, although eye movement data showed that participants in the absolute judgement condition tried to implement the instructions, this did not translate into a higher accuracy rate in any of the lineups. However, it should be noted that in the present perpetrator lineup, when participants made fewer comparisons between photographs (a performance more characteristic of an absolute judgement) they were more accurate in the identification lineup ; This work was supported by the transfer knowledge Project 088501 – “Assessment of Eyewitness Evidence. Experimental Forensic Psychology Unit” (Foundation of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - FUAM) and by a Research Assistant contract from the Regional Operational Programme for Youth Employment, co-financed by the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid and the European Social Fund
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