Gould, J. D. & Peeples, D. R. (1970). Eye movements during visual search and discrimination of meaningless, symbol and object patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 85(1), 51-55.

The eye movements of human Ss were recorded during a visual search task in which Ss determined how many of eight patterns, arranged in a square around a standard pattern, matched a standard pattern. Three classes of patterns, equated on the basis of four physical dimensions, were studied: meaningless patterns, symbols, and objects. It was found overall that the class to which a pattern belonged did not affect total scan time, errors, fixaion duration, or number of eye fixations. It was tentatively concluded for visual search tasks that pattern discrimination is based upon physical characteristics of patterns rather than meaningful characteristics of the patterns.