Most research on cognitive aging has emphasized universal mechanisms of decline, but cultural contexts shape how individuals engage cognitive resources across the lifespan. In this talk, some recent theoretical and empirical works that highlight the important joint effects of age and culture on cognition, with these effects depending on task demands and the availability of cognitive resources will be reviewed. A lifespan perspective suggests that culture-specific cognitive tendencies may be expressed when resources are sufficient but diminish when tasks place high demands on processing. Supporting this view, cross-cultural behavioral and neuroimaging findings reveal that cultural differences in memory performance are maintained for less cognitive-demanding memory retrieval but are reduced for relatively greater cognitive-demanding memory retrieval. These results indicate that the interplay of age and culture in memory depends on cognitive load and processing demands rather than reflecting fixed differences between cultural groups. For aging societies such as Korea and Japan, this perspective highlights the importance of examining when and how culture shapes cognition across adulthood. Although direct implications for well-being or intervention remain to be tested, understanding these conditional patterns can guide future work on sustaining meaningful cognitive engagement in diverse older populations.