Mac wireless keyboard - how do I fix specific spacebar glitch?

In Mac mail, when I type something into the search window in the upper right hand corner, the space bar freezes. I can type other letters, but can't get the keyboard to make a space. This same problem occurs in an app - Zotero, a citation program. This has been installed on my computer for nine months with no issues. I can't say if this preceded or followed the last Monterey update. This doesn't happen in Safari or iMessage. Also, no problem in MS Office programs, WORD and Excel, which I installed over a year ago. Here's what I've tried:

Deleted these plist files and rebooted, but same problem.

• • com.apple.keyboard.plist
  • com.apple.keyboardservicesd.plist

I stopped there since I'm not sure about dealing with the M1 chip.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

OS Version 15.5 (17613.2.7.1.8)