Almost all of us are mindreaders to the extent that we can judge other people’s emotions just by looking at them, but this ability is lost or severely attenuated in autistic people. Partly because autism is much more common among men than women (who tend to be better at reading others), psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen believes that the disorder should just be considered an extreme form of maleness. In other words, autism exists on a continuum: some have extreme cases, while others are mildly inattentive to the emotions of others. Find out where you stand by taking this test for the Autism-Spectrum Quotient that he has developed.
