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Pascual‐Leone (1972) has conducted task analyses in terms of M‐demand (amount of information processing required by the task) and demonstrated that the phenomenon of ‘horizontal decalages’, described by Piaget, can be accounted for by increasing demands of information processing. It has been shown that formal operational reasoning is required to balance even simple, one‐step chemical equations, while formal reasoning and a sufficiently large M‐capacity are required to balance more complex, multi‐step chemical equations. The objective of the present study is to investigate the relation between functional M‐capacity (Mf) and student performance in solving chemistry problems of increasing M‐demand. It was found that student performance decreased as the M‐demand of the problems increased. Similarly, the correlation coefficients between Mf‐ and student performance increased progressively as the M‐demand of the problems increased.
Mansoor Níaz (1988) studied this question.