testability of these claims. Physicist Ali Alousi, for instance, criticized it as unmeasurable and questioned the likelihood that thoughts can affect anything outside the head. In addition, critics have asserted that the evidence provided is usually anecdotal and that, because of the self-selecting nature of the positive reports, as well as the subjective nature of any results, these reports are susceptible to confirmation bias and selection bias. Psychologists and psychiatrists use the term "unconscious" in traditional practices, where metaphysical and New Age literature, often use the term subconscious. It should not, however, be inferred that the concept of the unconscious and the New Age concept of the subconscious are precisely equivalent, even though they both warrant consideration of mental processes of the brain. Psychologists and psychiatrists take a much more limited view of the capabilities of the unconscious than are represented by New Age depiction of the subconscious. There are a number of methods in use in the contemporary New Age and paranormal communities that affect the latter: Affirmations Autosuggestion Binaural beats Hypnosis Subliminal message See also Consciousness Collective unconscious History of hypnosis Non-rapid eye movement sleep Preconscious Rapid eye movement sleep Slow-wave sleep Subliminal stimuli Unconscious mind Transdisciplinary topics List of thought processes Philosophy of mind Notes and references External links A Reader's Guide To Pierre Janet: A Neglected Intellectual Heritage Who’s Minding the Mind? Consciousness studies Hypnosis zh:潛意識