Fig. 1.

Research pathways that have linked environment, representation, and cognitive performance across the life span. Pathway (A) represents research studying the association between the environment and cognitive performance without explicit consideration of the underlying mental representations. Pathway (B) represents research on the association between environmental exposure and mental representations. Pathway (C) represents research on the association between mental representations and cognitive performance. We propose that pathways (B) and (C) can particularly benefit from a network analytic approach.