When apple introduced OS X 10.5 they added a really cool Stack Item concept to the Dock. I found a cool trick to enable highlighting when moving over items in a Stack Item:
To enable this feature:
1. Launch the Terminal and type the following command:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean yes
2. Restart the Dock:
killall Dock
To disable the highlighting:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean no