When a recognition hotkey is set to "Listen then disable" (tested with keyboard and mouse, but reportedly also applies to joystick, as you'd expect), VoiceAttack will not stop listening until something is spoken (whether it's recognized as a command or not). Pressing the hotkey again will simply make the "Feature On Sound" while VoiceAttack keep displaying the "Listening - Disable after next recognition" icon with the "1" on it, and keeps listening.
This could be intended behavior, however the "Listen then stop listening after recognition completes" option is not documented for either keyboard (VoiceAttackHelp.pdf page 109), mouse (page 110), or joystick (page 111), despite the screenshots present at the first and last pages showing that option.
In beta version of VoicAttack that have the vector-based buttons/icons (v1.7.5.4 onward), pressing the hotkey "corrupts" (it looks like multiple icons are painted over each other without clearing) the listening status icon on the main screen, pressing it twice even more so:
This is only fixed by restarting VoiceAttack.
EDIT: Former is documented as intended behavior and latter is fixed in v1.7.5.31