Although the recognition of the affective experiences of peers is an important prerequisite for social adaptation, children's ability to recognize peers' facial displays of emotion remains unexamined. To investigate the degree to which young children were able to enact expressions of emotion that were recognizable by peers and adults, and to examine the accuracy of recognition as a function of age, and expressions as posed or spontaneous, two samples (N=91 and N=60) of children, aged four and five, and two samples (N=71 and N=32) of adult university undergraduates rated slides of the facial expressions of eight young children for four affective states--happiness, sadness, anger, and neutrality. Adults were more accurate than children in recognizing neutral states, less accurate for happiness and anger, and were not superior in recognizing sadness. The sex and ethnicity of the child appearing on the slides influenced only the adults' recognition of anger. The results indicate that both accuracy and inaccuracy in recognizing emotional expressions are influenced by processes other than recognition. (MCF)