Five Cochlear Implant Resolutions for the New Year

Space for a few more New Year’s resolutions on your list? After all, it’s the perfect opportunity to set yourself some realistic listening goals. The trick to achieving them is to break down your big resolutions into smaller tasks. Here are five achievable resolutions any cochlear implant user can try.

• How many hours per day are you wearing your audio processor? Could it be increased? We know that when adults wear their audio processors for 10 hours per day or more, they have better speech perception. By the way, you can check your device wear time with the AudioKey 2 app.
• Can you think of times that you aren’t wearing your audio processor when you could? Small periods of time can add up over the day. Set yourself goals to slowly increase your wearing time over the month.
• Hear more from John about how he achieved his goal of wearing his audio processor all day.

• Practice equals progress. Working on a specific listening skill at home e.g., your ability to perceive ‘sh’ sound in words, can aid your perception of sounds and words in conversation and your understanding in daily life.
• Is there a particular sound or word you find difficult in conversations? Or would you just like to continue to develop your audio processor listening abilities? Here is one handout to get you started, but there are many more on the blog.

• Meludia* is an online music training tool that provides step-by-step music activities to train the brain. Meludia is not just for musicians: anyone can start their music training at home regardless of their musical background. The platform is fun and easy to use.
• Meludia aims to improve your music listening skills, and in doing so, also develop auditory attention, perception of speech, and music enjoyment.
• Meludia is now available for MED-EL hearing implant users via myMED-EL.

• Do you use any assistive listening devices, such as an FM radio aid system, AudioStream, or AudioLink? Assistive Listening Devices are not as tricky to use as you might think and can help you hear more conversations. Discover more options on our website.

• Sign up to Hearpeers and join many hearing implant users all over the world and gain helpful information, tips, and support from others.