  We study the thermalization of a class of 4-dimensional strongly coupled
theories dual to a 5-dimensional AdS-Vaidya spacetime with Gauss-Bonnet
curvature corrections. We probe the thermalization using the two-point
functions, the expectation values of circular Wilson loops and entanglement
entropy. When boundary separation is small, we observe that the thermalization
times of these observables have the weak dependence on the Gauss-Bonnet
coupling constant $\alpha $. In addition, the growth rate of entanglement
entropy density is nearly volume-independent. We also show that a new kind of
swallow-tail behavior may exhibit in the thermalization of the two-point
function when $\alpha $ is negative and $\ell$ is large enough. At large
negative $\alpha $ ($\alpha \lesssim -0.1$) the relationship between the
critical thermalization time of entanglement entropy and the boundary
separation encounters certain \textquotedblleft phase
transition\textquotedblright .
