In a study investigating the hypothesis that verbal paraphrase and explanation tasks account for part of the difficulty that young children have with tests of metaphor comprehension, 32 six-year-old children were read short stories that ended with metaphorical sentences. Half of the children were asked to paraphrase the metaphorical sentences while the other half were asked to act them out with toys in a real world environment. The children in the enactment group produced more correct interpretations of the sentences than did the children in the paraphrase group. These results confirm the hypothesis that a paraphrase task underestimates young children's understanding of metaphor. (Tables comparing children's responses in the two groups are appended.) (Author/MM)