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can tell you what tomorrow will bring.
Dear Daughter, from the BBC World Service, listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
I'm Sue Nelson, exploring autism, empathy and psychopaths.
I want you to listen to a couple of statements and think about whether you agree with them or not.
Here's the first.
I can easily tell if someone else is interested or bored with what I'm saying.
And the second.
If anyone asked me if I liked their haircut, I would reply truthfully, even if I didn't like it.
How did you get on?
Personally,
I find it hard to tell
if someone's bored when I'm talking and would tell the truth about someone's haircut.
So what does this say about me?
Because these questions are taken from a test used in many countries around the world to measure someone's empathy,
which is generally understood to be an ability to understand the feelings of others.
It's a standard part of an adult autism assessment,
something I did almost five years ago and discovered at the age of 60 that I was autistic.
My diagnosis was a big surprise, but the real shock was the result of the empathy test,