Six- and eight-body final states produced in π ± p interactions at several energies have been reduced to four-body final states by neglecting the two and four slowest pions, respectively. It has been found that “pseudo-four-body” states thus obtained show similar behaviour to true four-body ones. This is demonstrated by comparing the distribution of events in corresponding LPS sectors. The fraction of events falling in a given sector is a smooth function of the average c.m. kinetic energy per particle. The same function describes true four-body and pseudo-four-body states obtained from six- and eight-body events. This observation suggests that the emission of the slower pions is weakly correlated to the emission of the fastest particles.
