diff --git a/spacy/tests/serialize/test_serialize_config.py b/spacy/tests/serialize/test_serialize_config.py
index d305d7719..05246c3f3 100644
--- a/spacy/tests/serialize/test_serialize_config.py
+++ b/spacy/tests/serialize/test_serialize_config.py
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ from spacy.language import Language
 from spacy.ml.models import MaxoutWindowEncoder, MultiHashEmbed
 from spacy.ml.models import build_tb_parser_model, build_Tok2Vec_model
 from spacy.schemas import ConfigSchema, ConfigSchemaPretrain
+from spacy.training import Example
 from spacy.util import load_config, load_config_from_str
 from spacy.util import load_model_from_config, registry
 
@@ -434,6 +435,11 @@ def test_config_overrides_registered_functions():
             nlp_re1.config["components"]["attribute_ruler"]["scorer"]["@scorers"]
             == "spacy.tagger_scorer.v1"
         )
+
+        @registry.misc("test_some_other_key")
+        def misc_some_other_key():
+            return "some_other_key"
+
         nlp_re2 = spacy.load(
             d,
             config={
@@ -441,7 +447,7 @@ def test_config_overrides_registered_functions():
                     "attribute_ruler": {
                         "scorer": {
                             "@scorers": "spacy.overlapping_labeled_spans_scorer.v1",
-                            "spans_key": "some_other_key",
+                            "spans_key": {"@misc": "test_spans_key_value"},
                         }
                     }
                 }
@@ -449,8 +455,14 @@ def test_config_overrides_registered_functions():
         )
         assert (
             nlp_re2.config["components"]["attribute_ruler"]["scorer"]["spans_key"]
-            == "some_other_key"
+            == {"@misc": "test_some_other_key"}
         )
+        # run dummy evaluation (will return None scores) in order to test that
+        # the spans_key value in the nested override is working as intended in
+        # the config
+        example = Example.from_dict(nlp_re2.make_doc("a b c"), {})
+        scores = nlp_re2.evaluate([example])
+        assert "spans_some_other_key_f" in scores
 
 
 def test_config_interpolation():