In addition to wog's suggestion of Devel::Peek, why not have some fun with Inline:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Inline C;

$ref = 1;
$refa = \$ref;
$refb = \$ref;
print myrefcount( $ref );

__END__
__C__
int myrefcount( SV *a ) {
        return SvREFCNT( a );
}
[download]

-derby