What refers to the laboratory study of speech?

The laboratory study of speech is best described by experimental phonetics. This branch of phonetics involves the use of scientific methods and tools to investigate and analyze speech production, transmission, and perception. It often includes the use of equipment like spectrograms and oscilloscopes to collect data on various speech phenomena, allowing researchers to create controlled experiments to test hypotheses about how speech sounds are produced and understood.

Experimental phonetics is significant because it provides empirical evidence that contributes to our understanding of speech processes, driving advancements in areas such as speech therapy, linguistics, and communication technology.

In contrast, other areas of phonetics like articulatory phonetics focus specifically on how speech sounds are produced by the movement of speech organs, and acoustic phonetics concentrates on the physical properties of sound waves produced in speech. Perceptual phonetics deals with how listeners perceive and interpret those sounds. Each of these subfields is important and offers unique insights, but experimental phonetics stands out as the one explicitly concerned with the laboratory-based study of speech.