A movement-suppression perspective of cognitive effort during listening

Cognitive effort shapes how well speech is understood under difficult conditions, yet how listeners regulate it remains poorly understood. Here, I review an overlooked motor dimension: effortful listening reduces gaze, saccades, blinks, and head movements. This movement suppression is not a simple proxy for effort, however, because stillness also marks inward disengagement. I argue that movement suppression instead reflects a listener's broader attentional and behavioral state, and propose a framework distinguishing casual, focused, and disengaged listening. I outline a neuro-functional architecture linking auditory, cognitive, and motor systems, and discuss how, within the focused mode, suppressing movement may aid comprehension. Treating movement as part of the listening state unites systems usually studied apart and casts effort as a perception–action process.