Reducing social distance between students with and without special educational needs is one of the core aims of inclusive education. The study verifies this aim by conducting a computer task with 540 participants (grade 3 and grade 4) in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. 50 percent of the sample is attending an inclusive school, 50 percent a regular school without contact to children with SEN. In contrast to former research (e.g. Connolly et al., 2006; Gerullis & Huber, under review) the current study is based on implicit measurements of social distance and is not using text vignettes, where a disability of a virtual person is explicitly emphasized. Participants are introduced to pictures of four “new” classmates. One of the classmates has got Down syndrome, one student has got a physical impairment, and a third student has got an obvious migration background. A fourth classmate serves as a control student and has no obvious handicap or migration background. First, pictures of the students are presented. Next, participants receive additional information about school performance and about having fun with the new classmates. The presentation order and the valance of additional information were varied at random. Following Coie & Dodge (1988), participants’ social distance towards these “new” classmates was measured by asking for the willingness to accept these students as a seatmate. It is hypothesized that participants who were educated in an inclusive class will show less social distance towards children with SEN and are more influenced by the additional information. Data of the main study are being collected but have not yet been analyzed. Data of a pilot study with non-inclusive classes suggest that there is a significant main effect for the factor disability (F=270.047; p< .01; Eta2= .38) and a weak main effect for additional information (F=156.470; p< .01; Eta2= .26). Results of the main study will be presented and discussed in the context of the current inclusion debate.

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