Unable to Access Object Properties in Phaser

[LeDenzel]

I'm pretty new to coding, and totally new to Phaser, so most of my knowledge comes from the Codecademy lessons.

For the snippet below, I copied the layout from one of the lesson materials and made adjustments as necessary.

//player information
gameState.player = {
   name: 'maleHero',                           //property for the name
   health: 100,                                //starting amount of health
   canAttack: true,                            //saves whether the player is able to attack
   frames: [{                                  //save animation frames
      key: 'idle',                                //custom key for the frame
      start: 0,                                   //custom start frame
      end: 3,                                     //custom end frame
      frameRate: 7,                               //custom frame rate
   },
   {
      key: 'move',
      start: 8,
      end: 15,
      frameRate: 15,
   },
   {
      key: 'attack',
      start: 16,
      end: 24,
      frameRate: 15,
   }],
};

This allows me to create the animations more cleanly, using this code:

//animation handler
gameState.player.frames.forEach(frame => {                           //pulls each frame
   this.anims.create({                                               //creates animations
      key: frame.key,                                                //pulls the given key
      frames: this.anims.generateFrameNumbers(gameState.player.name, { //generates the frames
         start: frame.start,                                         //pulls the given start frame
         end: frame.end,                                             //pulls the given end frame
      }),
      frameRate: frame.frameRate,                                    //pulls the given frame rate
      repeat: -1,                                                    //should repeat infinitely
      yoyo: false                                                    //should not repeat in reverse
   })
});

However, later in my code, when I am trying to Update the gameState with keypresses, it seems I can no longer access these properties. I am particularly interested in the 'canAttack' property of gameState.player. As you can see above, I declared its value as 'true' and I never change it. The following code fails to execute, but I'm not sure why.

//spacebar input should trigger attack animation if the player is able to attack
if (gameState.cursors.space.isDown && gameState.player.canAttack === true) {
   gameState.player.anims.play('attack', true);
}

It's not because of the gameState.cursors.space check, since this will execute if I delete the gameState.player.canAttack check. I tried to look at the Phaser lessons for insight, but they seem to be accessing properties without any trouble. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance for any help... I'm sure there's some simple explanation that I'm somehow missing. I just need to get this right or else I can't save data about characters.