Well, we go back to the "10 social dice" arguments here: Pretty sure Empathy can literally substitute for Socialise, or at least some aspect of it?
It helps you tailor your argument to their personality, which is usually an auto-win if their personality is uncomplicated(which these are kids, so more or less), because you always present your statements and requests in the most favorable light possible, and you know what they want, meaning you ask people to do what they would want to do.
In essence, where normal social interaction is either thrusting your wants at others and then fishing for what it takes to make them agree to those, or trying to identify probable interests in the other party, and then trying to exploit them, Empathy shortcuts that process.
You already know whether or not they'd agree to something, so if they don't, you don't ask them and possibly offend them, you just take your business to someone who does agree.
At the same time you know what they like, so you don't need to ask to keep doing things they like if its not too much trouble. Naturally they like you a lot, because everything just goes well around you and in Ami's case its usually fairly trivial to fulfill whatever wants her friends have.
Which means over time you have the result of a perfectly natural strong friendship with Ami, because she keeps doing stuff you like, and since you know what she doesn't like(what with her broadcasting it all the time), you don't do those things as much because you don't want to upset your friend.
TBH I'm pretty sure her whole class is going to wind up some level of psionic eventually, from the permanent benign psychic pressure she's exerting just being there and talking to them.
You know, if we assume this is a subconscious choice, I wonder why that is a thing for Ami? (I was assuming it's a matter of conscious awareness [to tone it down if needed], base comfort/frequency of usage with Psionics and Psionic base dots)
IMO its just the same reason why children don't have Shadows.
They don't have the internal barriers of a Public Self vs Private Self, for a child if you want something or feel something you make it known, so people can fix that issue because you sure as hell can't.
So of course a child sees nothing wrong with going without a mask, they already have enough trouble getting what they want without trying to disguise what they want.
Its only when people get more complicated that you have to actively hide the unacceptable parts of your private self, so that your mutual public selves can be inoffensive to each other, and your private self is only exposed to a few trusted persons(and even then I doubt anyone goes full exposure even to their spouse).
