Experimental semiotics
Experimental semiotics can be broadly understood as the use of experimental methods to study various aspects of sign systems, or, more narrowly, the experimental study of emerging sign systems. This is a recently growing area of research that allows an additional perspective to semiotic sciences (i.e. sciences studying sign systems, communication, perception etc). On one hand, it brings with it ideas common to natural sciences of careful testing and causal manipulation of the hypotheses, on another, it allows for new ways of collecting data and closely observing processes that are difficult to monitor in natural circumstances.
Practically, experimental semiotics usually works with small model sign systems that can be used to study various aspects of sign systems (see e.g. Roberts 2017). The similarity is not exact, but can still be productive.