I'm looking for studies, journal articles or papers about mistakes -
specifically, I'm trying to find out if there's any literature on the
human inability to see mistakes his/her own writing.

For example, you might be working on writing an essay; you've been
drafting and redrafting it for a week. Somewhere in the essay there's
a sentence that says "In teh 19th century, the policy of the French
government..." You can look right at the sentence, but you've seen it
too many times to notice that it says "teh" instead of "the."

There's probably a name for this phenomenon and there are probably
papers about it. Can you help me out?

Thanks for a genuinely interesting research project! I've gathered
some links to material that I hope you'll find useful. If there are
any typographical errors in this answer, I will be very embarrassed
indeed. ;-)

Error detection in text: do feedback and familiarity help?
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2405/is_3_131/ai_n6130103

The generation effect in reading and proofreading
http://www.springerlink.com/index/L8H1403T37126QW2.pdf

WHY AND WHEN DO WE CORRECT LEARNER ERRORS?
http://sunzi1.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/view/45/4500101.pdf

MINIMAL MARKING
http://www.english.vt.edu/~grammar/GrammarForTeachers/readings/haswell.html

Towards a Theory of Error
http://jonsenglishsite.info/Pedagogy%20articles/Download%20PDF%20and%20Word/Bill_Theory_of_Error.pdf

Ethos and Error: How Business People React to Errors
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/WRIT465/samples/Beason.pdf

Proofreading: A Reading/Writing Skill
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-096X(198712)38%3A4%3C464%3APARS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O

Proofreading Study Bibliography
http://www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/Eaton/research_partners/bib/partners_bib.htm

Human Error: Proofreading
http://panko.cba.hawaii.edu/HumanErr/Proofrd.htm

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "own errors" proofread study OR research OR paper
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22own+errors%22+proofread+study+OR+research+OR+paper

Google Web Search: "errors OR mistakes" proofread OR proofreading study text
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22errors+OR+mistakes%22+proofread+OR+proofreading+study+text

Google Web Search: error detect OR detection text proofread
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=error+detect+OR+detection+text+proofread

Google Web Search: "proofread your own work" OR "proofread one's own work"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22proofread+your+own+work%22+OR+%22proofread+one%27s+own+work%22

I hope this helps! If anything is unclear or incomplete, please
request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further assistance before
you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

This is absolutely what I was looking for - the references you
provided were extremely helpful and the bibliographies will lead me to
similar material. Thanks very much!

I konw tihs is a ltitle off subejct but I hvae herad taht it deos not
mttear the odrer of the ltteers in a wrod so lnog as the frist and
lsat ltteers are crrocet.  The bairn raeds the wrod as a wohle.  Tuhs,
smoe msiktaes are hrad to sopt. (and that took me a long time to
write!)

Thanks for reminding me of this! This will also be useful.

Nkamom's comment points out the difficulty of proofreading; our mind
corrects what our eyes see, based on long experience, making sense of
misplaced letters before we even register them.  (That works just as
well in German, by the way.)
Thank goodness for spell checkers!  Ever look at a word until you
couldn't make sense of it, let alone know if it was correctly spelled?