The relation between two core processes in action control (binding and retrieval) and learning has been much debated in recent years (e.g., Giesen et al., 2020; Moeller & Frings, 2017; Rudolph et al., 2024). While binding effects are sometimes still treated like a form of association learning, short-term binding effects have also successfully been distinguished from certain forms of learning. Here we summarize a recently proposed framework that explains some of the previous failures to detect meaningful relations between binding and learning by referring to the role of the variables decay, number of repetitions, time elapsing between repetitions, and interference (Frings et al., 2023). This approach will be discussed in the context of other contributions to this symposium.