This comparison of students' learning from reading books and from watching television uses Gavriel Salomon's model of learning effects, which is based on the amount of mental effort invested (AIME) in a medium as determining how deeply the information from that medium is processed. Mental effort, in turn, is predicted to depend on two perceptions with respect to the medium: perceived demand characteristics, and perceived self-efficacy. The subjects were 140 Dutch eighth graders whose test results were compared with those of a study done in the United States. The data showed that Dutch children, like American children, invest more mental effort in reading books than in watching television, and have lower perceived demand characteristics for television than for books. In contrast to American children, Dutch children did not perceive themselves to be more efficacious in learning from television. When measuring mental effort and perceived self-efficacy, the data for the Dutch children produced nonsignificant (negative) correlations for both media, while the data for American children correlated positively for books and negatively for television, which they regarded as the "easy medium." The results from both studies are also compared to a similar study undertaken in Israel. The text is supplemented with three tables, four figures, and a 10-item bibliography. (EW)