Synaptics touchpad switches apps in an undesirable way

[Wendell Nichols]

I use Fedora on a thinkpad T61p.  Most things are good, but when I'm 
away from my desk using it on my lap I find that many movements on the 
touchpad cause the desktop to rapidly cycle through apps on the 
desktop.  All of these are accidents but I just can't keep from 
accidentally striking the scroll areas of the pad, and depending on 
where the cursor is, madly switching desktops and apps.  So I'm 
constantly having to reposition myself on the correct app and restore 
hidden windows. 
Is there any way to disable this behaviour?
I use fedora 10 and 11 with kde.
wcn