The Acceptance Scale was administered to 507 nonhandicapped students in grades 2 through 6 in two similar public schools in a Midwestern university town. One of the schools included five classrooms of students with severe mental handicaps. The results showed that girls were more accepting of handicaps than boys and that respondents in the same school as the students with handicaps were more accepting than those in a different school. Older respondents were more tolerant of children with disabilities than younger respondents, especially in the integrated school. However, increased acceptance appeared to dissipate when contact between the two types of students stopped.
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