Recent international reports emphasize that the first three years of children’s life have more impact on their future outcomes than any other period during life. It is therefore essential that we have a thorough understanding of early social and cognitive development. In the past, experimental research that has fed our knowledge on early development studied infants within restricted, artificial laboratory contexts. However, only by studying children who are actively engaging in natural interaction with their social and physical environment, we can acquire ecologically valid, robust information about their social and cognitive development. It is thus essential to move experimental infancy research towards more natural situations. In doing so, MOTION will train a new generation of highly-skilled experts in the field of early development. New advances in wearable and wireless technologies now provide us with a unique opportunity. We are able to literally "unleash" the children we study – to free them from cables and constraints associated with the previous research methods. The primary scientific aim of the MOTION project thus is to leverage these new technological advances to study infants’ and toddlers’ body movements, gaze direction, and brain activity as they spontaneously and actively explore the world around them. MOTION will develop, produce and commercialize new tools to study early development in close cooperation between industry and academic partners. Innovative research tools will be used to investigate infants in natural interaction with their social and physical environment and gain a deeper understanding of early development. In addition to disseminating the new tools and research findings among the scientific community, it is the explicit aim of MOTION to reach out to professionals and the public, educate them about early development and instigate an open dialogue between professionals working with young children and developmental researchers.

AIM: Communities for Sciences (C4S) will be developed in 9 European cities (Milan -Italy-, Brussels -Belgium-, Manresa -Spain-, Vic – Spain-, Vienna -Austria-, Budapest -Hungary-, Sofia -Bulgaria-, Lund -Sweden- and Berlin -Germany) and their areas of influence. The activities that will be implemented will be coordinated by a local Hub in 6 cities with the leadership of one of these local partners of the Consortium. Each Hub will focus on a specific vulnerable community (immigrants, Roma community and disabled citizens) working with and for children and youth aged from 0-16 years old and their families. C4S will study the relationships between science and society by focusing upon vulnerable communities due to the fact that they are often not visible as active social agents. It is necessary not only to create activities for them, but also to include them as co-participants of these activities in order to ensure a more coherent approach towards inclusive education and to promote anticipatory policy-making. This will be done through science education activities, through formal and non-formal educational institutions, from an inclusive standpoint, to provide them with better science awareness and capacities and to make them progressively aware of exclusionary practices that at times may occur in science. Special emphasis will be put on engaging them in an intersectional approach to fight against the gender discrimination suffered by women and girls on multiple levels. In addition to this, each HUB will engage with policy-makers, educators and institutional representatives to promote their role in supporting and promoting an inclusive science education approach and to consolidate such inclusive practices on more solid grounds.