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Previous research reveals that storytelling that employs achronological sequencing challenges children\u2019s temporal cognition and narrative comprehension. Little is known, however, about how children\u2019s comprehension of events relates to their interpretation of higher-level meanings, such as event causality and character development, which children\u2019s films often convey through complex narrative strategies. To address this gap, this article proposes an empirical multimodal discourse\u2013semantic approach to children\u2019s reception of narrative complexity in film. The approach incorporates a social semiotic framework for analysing temporal relations in children\u2019s narrative and a model of the relationship between children\u2019s comprehension and their interpretation of film. The authors illustrate this approach through an exploratory investigation of 28 (7 to 10-year-old) children\u2019s responses to two flashback scenes from popular Disney films. The results indicate that children\u2019s comprehension of temporal relations supports their interpretation of event causality and character development. The investigation highlights the value of their approach for predicting and empirically testing the effect of complex narrative strategies on children\u2019s film reception.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/14703572251328342","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,11]],"date-time":"2025-08-11T08:00:46Z","timestamp":1754899246000},"page":"624-647","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Children\u2019s comprehension of time and their interpretation of event relations in narrative film: the tangled case of flashbacks"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"24","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1593-6365","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Emilia","family":"Djonov","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Macquarie School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6902-7322","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Chiao-I","family":"Tseng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Applied Information Technology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_3_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/08838159009386755"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.dr.2010.03.001"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1075\/rcl.11.2.09bat"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_5_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/S0193-3973(01)00097-1"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.4159\/9780674028531"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_7_1","volume-title":"Film Art: An Introduction","author":"Bordwell D","year":"2023","unstructured":"Bordwell D, Thompson K, Smith J (2023) Film Art: An Introduction. 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