• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.1590-1609
• /
• 2021

Laughter is one of the most important nonverbal sound that human generates. It is a means for expressing his emotions. The acoustic and contextual features of this specific sound are different from those of speech and many difficulties arise during their modeling process. During this work, we propose an audio laughter generation system based on unsupervised generative models: the autoencoder (AE) and its variants. This procedure is the association of three main sub-process, (1) the analysis which consist of extracting the log magnitude spectrogram from the laughter database, (2) the generative models training, (3) the synthesis stage which incorporate the involvement of an intermediate mechanism: the vocoder. To improve the synthesis quality, we suggest two hybrid models (LSTM-VAE, GRU-VAE and CNN-VAE) that combine the representation learning capacity of variational autoencoder (VAE) with the temporal modelling ability of a long short-term memory RNN (LSTM) and the CNN ability to learn invariant features. To figure out the performance of our proposed audio laughter generation process, objective evaluation (RMSE) and a perceptual audio quality test (listening test) were conducted. According to these evaluation metrics, we can show that the GRU-VAE outperforms the other VAE models.

• Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.197-204
• /
• 2021

Objective: This study is based on a parallax design before and after a non-equivalent control group to examine the effects of laughter therapy on the anxiety, depression, and stress in patients with cancer admitted to a nursing hospital. Design: A randomized controlled trial. Methods: Data collection was conducted on 34 patients who agreed to participate in the study among patients admitted to E Cancer Hospital from September to November 2018. Laughter treatment interventions were performed three times a week for 50 minutes each and a total of eight times. In this study, a tool developed by Spielberger was used to measure state anxiety, a tool developed by Beck was used to measure depression, and the Perceived Stress Scaled eveloped by Cohen was used to measure stress. Results: Anxiety was significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group (F=10.74, p=0.003). Depression was lower in both the experimental group and the control group that did not participate in the laughter therapy intervention and was not significant (F=0.58, p=0.451). Stress was significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group (F=4.36, p=0.045). Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that laughter therapy has a positive effect on reducing anxiety and stress in patients with cancer admitted to nursing hospitals.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.105-114
• /
• 2013

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to apply laughter therapy to clinical practice and investigate its effects on patients' anxiety and depression in order to increase the quality of nursing for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Methods: The study was conducted based on the non-equivalent control group pretestposttest design. The participants include 20 patients with IBD in the control group and 17 in the experiment group. Data was collected from July 10th, 2011 to January 22nd, 2012. Laughter therapy was administered once a day for five consecutive days. Results: The anxiety score was significantly different between the two groups and indicates that laughter therapy is effective for reducing anxiety among patients with IBD. Futhermore, there were differences in the depression scores of the experiment group between the pre-test and post-test, but no significant differences were found between the two groups. Conclusion: The results show that laughter therapy was effective in reducing anxiety among patients with IBD but did not decrease depression directly. Considering that the experiment group had a bigger reduction rate in depression scores than the control group. However, it is expected that laughter therapy will serve as an emotional nursing intervention for patients with IBD.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.15 no.9
• /
• pp.511-518
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the laughter treatment program on the satisfaction of life and emotional perception clarity of adult women. The subjects were 90 adult women in P metropolitan city who agreed to participate in the experiment and randomly placed 45 women in the control group and 45 women in the experimental group. In the experimental group, the laughter treatment program was conducted for fifteen weeks for a total of fifty minutes a week. t-test and covariance analysis were used to verify the effectiveness of the laughter treatment program. The results of the study are as follows. First, it was found that the laughter treatment program significantly improves the satisfaction of life of adult women. Second, the laughter treatment program significantly increased the emotional perception of adult women. Finally, the implications and limitations of this study and future research topics were discussed.

• Journal of East-West Nursing Research
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.47-52
• /
• 2012

Purpose: The design of this study is a nonequivalent control group, non-synchronized quasi-experimental study. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of laughter therapy on pain and anxiety of patients with postmastectomy. Methods: The participants were 33 patients admitted for mastectomy in a college affiliated hospital (17 patients in experimental group and 16 patients in control group from November, 2008 to March, 2009). The registered nurse who were certified as the 1st degree laughter specialist implemented the intervention once a day for 30 minutes from the 2nd day to the 6th day after surgery when visited them. Date were analyzed using t, Mann-Whitney U test, repeated measures of ANOVA, paired t-test, or ANCOVA. Results: The level of pain was significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group. Since the level of pain in all participants was reduced as time passed, the interaction effect between time and group existed. The level of anxiety was significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group. Conclusion: Based on the results, the laughter therapy may be recommended as an useful intervention to effectively reduce the levels of pain and anxiety among patients with postmastectomy.

• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.111-119
• /
• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of laughter therapy programs on middle school students' happiness, self-esteem and school life adaptation. Methods: In total, 60 students (Experimental group= 30. Control group=30) were recruited to answer a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was composed of questions about general characteristics, happiness, self-esteem and school life adaptation. The experimental group participated in a 45-minute laughter therapy program once a week for eight weeks, while the control group did not. Results: The scores of happiness(t=-4.68, p<.001), self-esteem(t=-3.38, p=.001), and school life adaptation(t=-3.76, p<.001) in the experimental group got significantly higher than the control group. Conclusion: Based on this study results, laughter therapy programs should be applied to improve happiness, self-esteem, and school life adaptation of middle school students.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.83-93
• /
• 2010

Purpose: This study identified effects of laughter therapy administered to mastectomy patients as an adaptive coping mechanism. Methods: The study design was a non-synchronized design with a non-equivalent control group. Participants were 40 patients admitted to S hospital in Busan from July 1 to October 10, 2008. The laughter therapy was provided to the experimental group for 20 minutes, four times per week for 2 weeks in each patient's room. Results: The experimental and control groups showed significant differences in Mood (t=-2.314, p=.032), and Stress (t=-2.535 p=.020). Pain and serum cortisol in the experimental and control groups did not show any significant difference. Conclusion: Based on the findings the laughter therapy has significant effects on mastectomy patients' mood and stress.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.199-208
• /
• 2016

This study aims to examine the influence of laughter therapy program on successful aging and stress of elderly by applying 60 minutes of laughter therapy program twice a week for 10 weeks to elderly. By the selection standard, 25 subjects for experimental group at cultural center located in city S, 25 subjects each for comparative group and control group are convenience sampled at senior citizen center located in city S. The data analysis of this study utilized SPSS 19,0 to conduct Analysis of Covariate(ANCOVA). As for the result of conducting laughter therapy program for 10 weeks, the experimental group showed increased successful aging of elderly and reduced stress than the comparative or control group.Therefore, this study has prepared a ground to apply and verify the scientific basis of laughter therapy program in the current condition where various aging problems are emerging due to the aging society.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.72-80
• /
• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of subjective xerostomia and salivary pH in salivary glands stimulated by laughter therapy in frail elderly women. Methods: The research used a one-group pretest-posttest design. Data were collected from July 2, 2015 to September 30, 2015. A sample of 41 frail female elderly patients was recruited at A Nursing Home in K City, Korea. We measured xerostomia and salivary pH using a questionnaire and BCP test paper (pH 5.6~7.2). Laughter therapy was given once a week for four weeks (3 items). Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, independent t-test, ANOVA, paired t-test and Cronbach's using the SPSS 18.0 program. Results: There were significant differences in salivary pH according to oral health (t=-2.06, p<.05). There were significant differences in xerostomia (t=4.41, p<.001) and salivary pH (t=-7.94, p<.001) after salivary glands stimulated by laughter therapy. Conclusion: Salivary glands stimulated by laughter therapy improved xerostomia and salivary pH of the frail elderly. Therefore, salivary glands stimulated by laughter therapy may be useful in promoting and maintaining oral health among the frail elderly in the rapidly increasing population of old people.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.188-198
• /
• 2019

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of laughter therapy on depression, anxiety, fatigue, and quality of sleep in gastrointestinal cancer survivors. Methods: This study was a randomized controlled trial. We compared the effect of laughter therapy with usual care only in post chemotherapy gastrointestinal patients. Outcomes included changes in depression and anxiety (according to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), fatigue (according to the Fatigue Severity Scale), and quality of sleep (according to the Verran & Synder-Halpern Sleep Scale). Data was collected July 2015 through January 2016. Seventy nine participants who agreed to participate in this study were randomized to either the experimental group (n= 40) or the control group (n= 39). Therapy included eight sessions (60 minutes each, once weekly). Data were analyzed using the Windows SPSS 22.0 program. Results: Laughter therapy was effective in reducing fatigue (p= .019) and increasing satisfaction of sleep (p= .030). There were no differences between the groups after therapy for depression (p= .129) and anxiety (p= .200). Conclusion: Results of this study indicate that laughter therapy may be an effective nursing intervention for improving the health status of gastrointestinal cancer survivors after chemotherapy.