A qualitative analysis is presented for spatially hat, isotropic and homoge
neous cosmologies derived from the string effective action when the combine
d effects of a dilaton, modulus, two-form potential and central charge defi
cit are included. The latter has significant effects on the qualitative dyn
amics. The analysis is also directly applicable to the anisotropic Bianchi
type I cosmology. [S0556-2821(99)01112-1].