Individuals with Autism struggle with reciprocal social interaction in everyday life, leading to a multitude of negative outcomes. The exact reasons and neurobiological underpinnings are still unknown. To better capture the social problems in autism, we will apply a second-person perspective approach- focusing on active engagement in social interaction- which is currently largely lacking. Not only do individuals with autism have problems with understanding Neurotypical (NT) individuals, NT individuals also have problems with understanding individuals with autism, referred to as the theory of the double empathy problem. According to this theory, individuals who are neurologically different and have different ways of processing the world may have trouble connecting with each other. Importantly, this also implies that individuals with autism may experience less difficulties interacting with another individual with autism. Preliminary research findings support this view, however, systematic research is lacking. We therefore investigated social interactions between individuals with autism, individuals without autism, and mixed interaction pairs. To this end, we conducted a large-scale mixed-method questionnaire study and two behavioral studies. The findings from this project will provide fundamental new insights into social difficulties in autism, which can inform interventions and improve communication with individuals with autism.