I would imagine it's individually dependent.  Some pick up abstract concepts quickly, others question and need to explore, and some just aren't ready or don't have the necessary background (yet) to make the leap.  Who's to say our present models are correct and that some youngster won't reject it all and come up with something better?

I'm still waiting for a Copernicus of Quantum mechanics.

Because your question was addrwssed to me, I suppose that you ask about "growth and development" of protein structure. If so, I say "Yes" and suggest you to take a look of a book "Protein Physics" (Finkelstein A.V., Ptitsyn O.B., 2002 – Academic Press, An Imprint of Elsevier Science; ISBN 0-12-256781-1) ; pay attention to lectures 19-21. There are more fresh editions in Russian and Chinese; so, if you can read one of these langeuges, turn to me directly, .  I could also recommend you two my recent papers: Garbuzinskiy S. A., Ivankov D. N., Bogatyreva N. S. Finkelstein A. V. - «Golden triangle» for protein folding rates. - Proc.Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 2013, 110, 147-150 (especially Supplementary Materials), and Finkelstein A.V., Ivankov D.N., Garbuzynskiy S.O., Galzitskaya O.V. - Understanding the folding rates and folding nuclei of globular proteins. In eBook Series "Frontiers in Protein and Peptide Sciences", V.1, chapter 5, pp.91-138 (B.M. Dunn, ed.), 2014. And, of course, take a look of a book "Structure and mechanism in protein science: A guide to enzyme catalysis and protein folding" (by a great experimentalist Alan Fersht, 1999. - N. Y.: W. H. Freeman & Co), specifically chapters 2, 15, 18, 19; and a series of papers of David Shaw et al. on simulation of protein folding, specifically:  Shaw D. E., Maragakis P., Lindorff-Larsen K., Piana S., Dror R. O., Eastwood M. P., Bank J. A., Jumper J. M., Salmon J. K., Shah Y., Wriggers W. 2010. Atom-level characterization of structural dynamics of proteins. Science, 330: 341–346; Lindorff-Larsen K., Piana S., Dror R. O., Shaw D. E. 2011. How fast-folding proteins fold. Science, 334: 517–520; Piana S., Klepeis J. L., Shaw D. E. 2014. Assessing the accuracy of physical models used in protein-folding simulations: quantitative evidence from long molecular dynamics simulations. Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol., 24: 98–105.

I haven't reviewed any literature on this, but I know it's related to questions in the debate on common core: whether or not it tries to introduce certain topics too early in development:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tSQlJE6VuA

This is the only thing I've seen about this, and I only hope the video gives some additional information that is at least somewhat useful at narrowing the context of the conversation, regardless of people's thoughts on common core (i.e. I hope this helps us talk about the OP's question and not common core).