Self-Correction, Hearing Yourself

ESB   Sun Nov 11, 2007 5:51 pm GMT
When I record my voice on tape and listen to myself, it sometimes surprises me to hear an accent.

I say "surprises" because when I talk, I don't hear it myself, at least not to the same degree. If I make a mistake, of course, I self-correct immediately. But otherwise, apart from these self-corrections, I assume my speech to be acceptable and non-accented.

However, playing back a tape with my voice tells a different story! Does anyone know why? How is it, that we don't hear our mistakes (because otherwise we'd self-correct ourselves instantly)? Is it that we don't KNOW we're making mistakes? That can't be true: we hear our mistakes on the tape, so can very easily tell what's accented and what's not.

If that's the case, I just don't understand what the problem is.