The Tabula Rasa and Other Psychological Concepts in Psychological Theory

Psychology is study of the human mind. The mankind has been fascinated with mind, brain, and emotions from the beginning. In 21st century there were many psychological theories which were emerged. Psychological theories are valuable for guiding practice in education, mental health, business and other domains. They provide answers to intrinsically interesting questions concerning many kinds of thinking including perception, emotion, learning and problem solving. Some of the psychological theories can be applicable to the African context.

The positive psychology theory was termed by Martin Seligman, it is the scientific study of “what makes life most worth living” or the scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing on multiple levels that include the biological, personal relational, institutional, cultural and global dimensions of life. Positive psychology is concerned with Eudaimonia, the good life, reflection about what holds the greatest value in life- the factors that contribute the most to a well lived and fulfilling life. Positive psychology have suggested a number of ways in which individual’s happiness may be fostered. Social ties with a spouse, family friends and wider networks through work, clubs or social organizations are of particular importance, while physical exercises and the practice of meditation may also contribute to happiness. The happiness may rise with increasing financial income, though it may plateau or even fall when no further gains are made. The theory is applicable to Africans for example mostly they get married, they have friends, family and wider network communicating with other people through social media such as WhatsApp, Facebook etc. Steven Pinker in 2002 makes a case against tabula rasa models in the social science arguing that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations. He states that the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits) called empiricism. The noble savage means people are born good and corrupted by society. The other myth is the ghost in the machine means each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology. According to Pinker the blank slate myths holds that the human mind has no unique structure and that its entire organization comes from the environment via socialization and learning.

In the African continent, the child is not just considered but believed to possess an innate ability and this is very much demonstrated by mothers talking to their babies as though they were adults. Also as the child grows up during infancy, he or she is expected to use his or her initiative as a result of the innate and not the tabula rasa mind. The other theory is Neuroscience, it is the study of how the nervous system develops, its structure and brain. In 2014 Brenda Milner, Marcus Raichle and John O they discover specialized brain network for memory and cognition in neuroscience which they call it cognitive neuroscience. The cognitive neuroscience is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in brain which are involved in mental processes. Cognitive neuroscience is taken as a study area in some of the universities in Africa for example Unisa in South Africa.

The DSM-5 It is diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder is used by clinicians and psychiatrist to diagnose psychiatric illnesses. It is published by the American psychiatric Association and covers all categories of mental health disorders for both adults and children. The APA removes, gender identity disorder from the list of mental illness and replaces it gender dysphoria to describe a person’s discomfort with his or her gender. It was published in 2013, and is applicable to Africans in the sense that it serves as a guide to therapist and other practitioners that are in similar disciplines, working with patients that the society perceives them abnormally to understand the situation of disorder better.

Connectivism is a theory which was introduced in 2005 by Siemen and Downes. It is a form of experiential learning which prioritizes the set of formed by actions and experience over the idea that knowledge is propositional. Kop, R. and Hill, A. (2008), they pointed out that connectivism is a theoretical framework for understanding learning and the learning occurs when knowledge is triggered through the process of a learner connecting to and feeding information into a learning community. The central aspect of connectivism is the representation of a network with nodes and connections. A node is anything that can be connected to another node such as an organization, information, data, feelings and images. Three types of nodes which are recognized by connectivism are neural, conceptual and external. Connectivism sees learning as the process of creating connections and expanding or increasing network complexity. The theory of connectivism is applicable to the African context according to Kizito, R. N. (2016) it is an exploratory attempt to connect the theory to the prevailing technology adoption archetype used in African contexts with the aim of extracting influences that could shape pedagogical technology adoption in African high education contexts.

Working memory is cognitive system with a limited capacity that is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing. Working memory is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision making and behavior. According to Dehn, (2002) working memory assist us in learning and connecting thoughts and ideas. Central executive according to Baddeley 2001, is the most important part of the working memory because it was in complete control of the actions of the other components. The central executive has the ability to store information but its capacity is limited. The working memory central executive system is applied in Africans. For example when reading to understand, the readers will integrate information from difference sentences in a text and incorporate background knowledge and ideas to make sense of details.

Tianyuan, Li and Helene, H. Fung they introduced a theory called dynamic goal theory in 2011.The theory helps to understand the experiences of marital closeness over time and the role of health in a sample of high functioning older couples. The theory argues that people have multiple goals to achieve in their marriage. These marital goals can be classified into three categories, personal growth goals, companionship goals and instrumental goals. The priority of these marital goals is under dynamic changes across adulthood. The dynamic goal theory is also applicable to Africans because most of the young couples emphasize the personal growth goals, middle aged couples prioritize the instrumental goals and old couples focus on the companionship goals.

Goldstein and Cialdini published an extension of self-perception theory in 2007, they hypothesized that people sometimes infer their own attributes or attitudes by ‘observing the freely chosen actions of others with whom they feel a sense of merged identity- almost as if they had observed themselves performing the acts. The psychological perspective considers these concepts and theories as universal, which means that the lens is appropriate in studying all human beings, not just those western cultures. To conclude, most of the psychological theories are applicable to the African cultural perspectives.