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Interoception and Facial Emotion Perception1275Difficulties in recognizing others%u2019 emotions have been assumed to be one relevant source of broader social interaction difficulties in individuals on the autism spectrum (D. A. Trevisan & Birmingham, 2016; choice of autism terminology informed by Botha et al., 2023). Yet, recent research suggests a more differentiated picture: different paths to emotion recognition - rather than differences in abilityare likely to explain observed differences in emotion recognition between individuals on the autism spectrum and non-autistic individuals (Arnaud, 2020; Stel et al., 2008). For example, individuals on the autism spectrum might integrate their own mental representations of emotions less (Keating et al., 2023) and rather rely on learned rules when interpreting emotional expressions (Rutherford & McIntosh, 2007). One other path to emotion recognition draws on interoception, which involves the sensation of (changes in) physiological states (Craig, 2002). Via automatic alignment to an expressed emotion, or so-called emotional contagion (E. Hatfield et al., 1993; Prochazkova & Kret, 2017), physiological changes can not only inform an individual about their own emotional experience (Damasio, 1996) but can also offer insights in the emotional experience of others via simulation, such as facial mimicry (Wood et al., 2016). While previous research suggests that physiological responses to others%u2019 emotions (Davies et al., 2016; Hubert et al., 2009), as well as interoception (Garfinkel et al., 2016), would be altered in autism, little is known about the relevance of these alterations in an emotion recognition context. In the current study with a non-autistic sample, we aimed to approach a better understanding of the role of physiological signals and their sensation in emotion recognition alterations in relation to autistic trait levels paving the way for future investigations in autism..The Body in Emotion Perception in Autism Past studies on the recognition of facial or bodily emotion expressions in autism predominantly report worse performance, that is, a lower sensitivity to emotions or less accuracy in labelling them, compared to non-autistic samples (Frank et al., 2018; Uljarevic & Hamilton, 2013). Individuals on the autism spectrum have further been shown to differ from non-autistic individuals in their physiological responses to observed emotional expressions. More specifically, both hyper- and hypoarousal to emotion displays have been reported (Cuve et al., 2018; Hubert et al., 2009), whereas the automatic mirroring of facial expressions (i.e., facial mimicry) has typically been found to be reduced (Davies et al., 2016). Facial mimicry patterns are thought to play an important role in attributing discrete emotions to