Citing a collection of work (i.e. literature review) by 1 citation? There comes a time when one is reviewing a certain model of a certain author (let's call him X) who claims that his/her model was built upon the work of Author A, Author B, Author C, etc... with detailed investigation of such authors and their works.

If I want summarize and not repeat everything, can one simply say something like this:


  This conceptual model/scale was developed  by X in 2010 and was based on his review and analysis of the various available literature in the domain (X 2010, p. 2).


By 'available literature', I'd want to mean Author A, B, C, etc... Sometimes though and if the studies are really limited (2-5 studies), I'd be citing them all or mention a few such as in this way:


  This conceptual model/scale was developed  by X in 2010 and was based on his review and analysis of the various available literature (e.g. Author A, Author B) in the domain (X 2010, p. 2).


However, sometimes the reviewed literature is too large and so based on that, can I follow the first example?
Do not automatically cite everything X has cited. You should only cite a paper you've read, and it will be assumed that you have read everything you cite. Author X could have made a mistake, misunderstood something or deliberately misrepresented something.

Whether it's worth tracing back every reference cited in X's paper depends why you're referring to it. If your paper describes an alternative model and the differences can be traced back to, for example, the data sources you've used, then you should go back to them, read them and cite them; ditto if your paper is a critical review of X's model. If you're simply using X's model out-of-the-box you don't necessarily need to go back and pick over every source for every parameter estimate.