The following is an excerpt of the intervention methodology. For more information, please see the full text of the article on the publisher's website or through your institution's library.

Procedure

Before running the study, we created an ad hoc story featuring a disabled child in a wheelchair. In this story, the disabled child wishes to play with classmates, but since nobody invites him, he spends his time playing alone, listening to music, drawing, or imagining fantastic stories. When he asks his desk companion to play together, she answers with some embarrassment that he would not be able to play the games they are playing. When he replies that instead he could do that, she and other three friends of her invite him to play together, discovering that they could easily play together, simply by engaging in the games a bit differently. The group of children without disabilities changes its mind towards peers with disabilities, also stating that they are sorry for their past behaviour. Everybody is then very helpful towards the child with disability, and this newly established friendship persists over the years, leading to a change of attitudes and behaviours of characters without disabilities towards children with disabilities as a whole. We also created a video-cartoon with free online programs. […]

Participants were randomly allocated (at the class level) to the three conditions. In the reading condition, in each class, in order to enhance children’s attention, participants were divided into small groups of approximately 3–6 members. The experimenter read the story and then discussed it briefly with the children. The watching condition was identical to the reading condition. In this case, however, children were shown the video by means of tablets or smart phones.  […]

Measures

Inclusion of the other in the self

Intergroup anxiety

Ingroup and outgroup norms

Perspective-taking

Affective empathy

Outgroup attitudes

Social Distance

Contact intentions

Helping intentions