This paper presents an analysis of cognitive skill levels expressed in high school students' performance using laboratory simulations. We address lower-order cognitive skills (LOCS) and higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS) situations in a virtual simulation activity, in order to identify and underly further discussions about students' reasoning when dealing with different levels of questions in such an environment. The research participants are 38 high school students, with an average age of 16 years, they performed an activity with two laboratory simulations in an instructional context in which students, working in small groups, could demonstrate their abilities to attain LOCS and HOCS levels. To analyze data, we established connections between students' responses and cognitive skill levels, making sure that the established level contemplates the achieved performance. Results related to the attainment of LOCS level were found to be consistent with the literature as there was a prevailing adequacy, observed by the greater proportion of lower-order skills (LOCS-L3), related to concepts memorization However, when it comes to HOCS capacity, there is a different pattern of students' performance, evidenced in students' difficulties in expressing higher-level reasoning, suggesting efforts to the attainment of HOCS level through different approaches of interaction. The outcome of this study suggests that combining LOCS and HOCS in laboratory simulations may help teachers identify and progress on students' reasoning between cognitive skill levels, and also contribute to the assessment and adaptation of simulations in order to facilitate learning.