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Embodied Facial Emotion Processing in Autism and Social Anxiety1696The expression %u201cI feel you%u201d does not exist without a reason: embodied perspectives on social cognition highlight our bodies as platforms to co-represent perceived bodily states of others, thereby gaining information about their mental states, including emotional experiences (Niedenthal, 2007). Yet, individuals differ in their bodily responses to others%u2019 emotions (Fawcett et al., 2022) as well as in the sensation of their internal states (i.e., interoception; Murphy et al., 2020), which might, in turn, influence how emotions of others are processed (Terasawa et al., 2014). Distinct alterations in facial emotion perception as well as in physiological reactivity to others%u2019 emotions have been reported in individuals on the autism spectrum and individuals with social anxiety (Gilboa-Schechtman & ShacharLavie, 2013; Hubert et al., 2009; Uljarevic & Hamilton, 2013; Vrana & Gross, 2004), contributing to social interaction difficulties. Yet, these processes have mainly been investigated separately, and little is known about potential alterations in the direct integration of physiological feedback in processing others%u2019 emotions in autism and social anxiety4. The current study aims to unveil condition-specific alterations in the links between physiological changes in response to facial emotional expressions and facial emotion perception, and to explore the role of individuals%u2019 differences in interoception therewithin.Facial Emotion Perception Alterations in Autism and Social Anxiety DisorderFacial emotion perception in autism has been extensively researched, and most studies show lower accuracies in the recognition of all facial expressions of basic emotions (Uljarevic & Hamilton, 2013; Yeung, 2022). While results have long been interpreted as evidence for %u201cdeficits%u201d in emotion processing, recent approaches highlight the different paths to emotion recognition that individuals on the autism spectrum would employ (Keating et al., 2023; Rutherford & McIntosh, 2007). The few studies that investigated the perception of emotional arousal in others%u2019 facial expressions in autism have mainly observed that individuals on the autism spectrum report on lower arousal in others%u2019 facial emotional expressions compared to neurotypical controls (Schneider et al., 2020; Tseng et al., 2014). Whether individuals on the autism spectrum also show altered confidence in their facial emotion recognition skills is, to date, unclear. Two studies have found no differences between individuals on the autism spectrum and neurotypical controls in how confident they are in their emotion recognition skills (Sawyer et 4 In this manuscript, we aim to adhere to the basic principles of inclusive language by avoiding the term %u201cdisorder%u201d and by referring to the clinical conditions as %u201cautism%u201d and %u201csocial anxiety%u201d. On an individual level, we employ the most widely accepted terminology in the autism community (Botha et al., 2023), using the person-first term %u201cindividuals on the autism spectrum%u201d and, accordingly, %u201cindividuals with social anxiety%u201d.